Thibaut Courtois says Real Madrid’s players don’t discuss Cristiano Ronaldo in the Santiago Bernabeu dressing room, despite them clearly missing his goals this season.
Real go into the weekend 10 points behind La Liga leaders Barcelona in the Spanish top-flight table, and that gap will extend to 13 if Barca beat Valencia at the Nou Camp on Saturday evening.
But ahead of Real’s home game against Alaves on Sunday, goalkeeper Courtois – who arrived at the club shortly after Ronaldo left for Juventus in the summer – says that the Portuguese isn’t a topic of conversation amongst his former teammates.
“He is not being talked about in the locker room,” Courtois told Belgian newspaper Het Nieuwsblad, via AS . “It is mainly the press that drops his name. There were matches that we lost in which we got 10 chances but did not score.
“At the same time he scores two for Juventus. Then it’s easy to talk about him.”
However, Courtois did admit that the team are missing the goals of their former talisman. “If Ronaldo leaves and there is no real top attacker in his place, you know that it will be a difficult year,” he continued. “You take 50 goals away.
“You hope that Benzema or Bale will score more and partly they do that too. We are making progress in the last few weeks. “We have won the Club World Cup, are still active in the Copa del Rey and the Champions League.
“Okay, in LaLiga we are 10 points behind. But sometimes Barcelona also has difficult matches that they win in the last minute. “Maybe it’s a bit of a transitional year. For me it does not matter much if the first year is less if the next ones are top.”
