Alex Ferguson. Zinedine Zidane. Andrea Pirlo. Mauricio Sarri. Ralf Rangick. These are the few coaches who have replaced the Portuguese at half-time during Cristiano Ronaldo’s career of around 25 years. Now, Ange Postecoglou has also entered this exclusive list.
You don’t replace Cristiano Ronaldo if he’s not injured. This has been a truth in the world of football at all clubs CR7 has played. Alex Ferguson did it only once with young Cristiano, Zidane (Real Madrid), Sarri (Juventus) and Pirlo (Juventus) have done it because of injury. Ralf Rangnick was the first to do so as a “tactical move” in Ronaldo’s round two at Manchester United. On Tuesday, it was Ange Postecoglou’s turn to do the “non-permissive”.
The former Tottenham coach (we’ll skip a few 9-game stints at Nottingham Forest) is now in charge of Ronaldo’s club in the Saudi Arabian league. In Tuesday’s game, an Al Nassr player was sent off early in the game, Al Ettifaq thanked for the gift and added to a 2-0 lead before half-time.
Then Postecoglou reacted by telling the 41-year-old Ronaldo, one of the best attacking players of all time, that an offensive move was for the Portuguese to put on his training suit for the second half. Al Nassr ended up turning the game into a 3-2 victory, with the goals coming in the last quarter of an hour.
After the game, Postecoglou was of course asked about benching CR7 after 45 minutes.
-I think there is a bigger story today, and that is that the ten players from Al Nassr were absolutely incredible. That’s the only thing you should write about today. Everything else is irrelevant. It doesn’t matter which team it is, because when you see ten men playing in those conditions for so long and coming back from being 2-0 down, that’s the only story today,” Postecoglou replied evasively, according to the Daily Mail.
