Mourinho marvels at ever-improving Ronaldo
Wednesday, March 14, 2012
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José Mourinho called double goalscorer Cristiano Ronaldo "unbelievable" after Real Madrid CF eased past PFC CSKA Moskva, who made too many mistakes according to Leonid Slutski.
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José Mourinho, Madrid coach
[Cristiano] Ronaldo is unbelievable. You would have thought with the number of goals he scored last season you couldn't improve, but he is at another level.
Many people said that tonight's game was easy but I knew what we were facing. I liked the performance, especially the maturity. We controlled the game until 3-0. We weren't out of this world but the team did well. At 3-1 we got a little nervous but we managed to close out the match. The team has been very balanced and this shows as we have got to the Champions League quarter-finals in two consecutive years.
It does not matter which opponent we face in the next round. Obviously there are some teams who are stronger than others, but we will face whoever comes. People can't understand how much I love Chelsea and I know if I get them in the quarter-finals or the semi-finals, they would be great opponents. I'm happy Chelsea have got through, but I'd love to play them in the final.
Leonid Slutski, CSKA coach
To get a result we would have needed to produce our best game and make no mistakes. We played in the right manner before the interval, attacked on the break but still made mistakes, giving away chances.
There is a feeling of disappointment that we failed to produce a big game. We had some nice openings in front of goal. [Seydou] Doumbia had a great chance with the score at 0-0. In games like these you cannot think you will get a second or third or fourth chance. We made many mistakes and allowed them to dominate possession; that was never going to result in anything good for us considering the level of their team.
I would not want to blame anything on [Sergei] Chepchugov. We have to support him, because he played well in the first leg and saved us several times today. More experienced players made mistakes tonight. I brought on [Pavel] Mamaev because we needed to attack and score. We did not play Keisuke Honda because we hope he will be fit for our next league game against Spartak Moskva.