The Portuguese forward has made a terrible start to this season’s La Liga campaign, netting only twice in the six games that he has started for the Los Blancos this term so far. Moreover the two goals coming in the opening couple of games and since then he has hit a dry spell in front of goal. Ronaldo has failed to score in the last four games, which comes as a surprise with the number of goals that the reigning champions of Europe have been scoring in recent times.
This will be a concerning factor not just for the coach, but his team-mates as well and the fans seeing their star player fail in back to back games. He has even failed to score at the Santiago Bernabeu in the last four games. Following the game on Sunday where Real Madrid scraped past Athletic club courtesy of a late goal from the substitute Alvaro Morata, Ronaldo officially registered his worst start to a season having failed to score yet again.
Since the forward’s return from a knee injury he suffered at the Euro 2016, Ronaldo has not looked like a player who had previously mesmerized the audience and blown away the defence with his dazzling pace and creativity in the previous seasons.
The Portugal captain is nowhere close to his best yet, at the moment and needs to make things happen soon enough, if Real wish to be serious title contenders this time around too.
Another major worry for Zidane is the below par performances from his team-mates Bale and Benzema, who along with Cristiano form the elusive BBC trio at Real Madrid. With the likes of Morata and Asensio on the bench the three fowards will have to better their performances in the upcoming games.
Currently, Messi leads the race for the Pichichi with seven goals followed closely by his Barcelona teammate Luis Suarez. Ronaldo sits at the 34th spot in the list, which is quite surprising knowing his desire to keep scoring match after match.
It is left to Zindane to either get his star attraction back in form and firing on all cylinders or go against Perez and include some smaller names in the starting 11 at the expense of Ronaldo. If the manager decides to do the latter and starts getting the results, we might be close to witnessing the end of the Cristiano era at Bernabeu, in the days to come.