Cristiano Ronaldo loves a challenge. Competition with Lionel Messi has been keeping him young for years.
On Tuesday night he watched Mohamed Salah overtake him in goals scored this season and he will be more motivated than ever to make it 12 straight games scoring – at least one goal against Bayern and he will be back on level terms with the Liverpool forward.
Salah now has 43 goals in 47 games. Ronaldo has 42 in 39. He is still out in front in the Champions League with 15 goals this season but he wants it all – another Champions League winners medal, another Golden Shoe, and to be able to say when he sits down with Florentino Perez to finalise his new contract at the end of the season, that he has outscored everyone in football for yet another season.
Cristiano Ronaldo is in fine form, but currently sits just one goal behind Mohamed Salah
Salah netted twice against Roma and the pressure is now on Ronaldo to overtake him again
Ronaldo wants pay-parity with Lionel Messi, whose total earnings finish up at around the €45million mark. Three years older than Messi, Madrid remain adamant that they will not grant him that wish.
As he carries them towards another Champions League final, though, they are resigned to ensuring he earns as much as Neymar – around €35m.
He was upset in the summer when it seemed Madrid were angling to bring Neymar in to replace the Portuguese so it will be a symbolic new deal if it keeps him on the Brazilian’s financial level.
No-one in Madrid now regrets the fact that they were unable to switch the two strikers. Neymar’s season has been tale of early form, bad luck with injuries and a prolonged period of absence without leave – partying in Brazil while PSG celebrate the French league without him.
Ronaldo netted five times against Bayern in last year’s Champions League – can he do it again?
His battle with Lionel Messi (pictured) has kept him young, and now he has a new opponent
Back in Spain, Ronaldo is in the same form that saw him power Madrid to a double last year. He scored five goals against Bayern Munich in the quarter-finals last season, and one step closer to the final this time, he meets them again and it will have boosted his confidence further, if that’s possible, that the man charged with marking him has spent all week singing his praises.
Jerome Boateng told German magazine Kicker that Ronaldo was ‘a machine’ and the world’s most complete striker and on Tuesday he waxed lyrical on how fit he looks when he takes his shirt off to celebrate goals.
Seventeen goals is his record for a Champions League campaign and Ronaldo needs just two goals on Wednesday night to match that with two games to spare.
He has scored 22 goals in his last 12 games in all competitions and there has been a spring in his step that some thought might have deserted him forever when he started this season slowly.
Ronaldo’s next opponent – Jerome Boateng – has spent the week talking about how fit he looks
March 5 vs April 24: Ronaldo’s superstition means the team have repeated the same photo this week after it was taken before away wins over Paris Saint-Germain and Juventus
As well as the maximum motivation after Salah’s sublime performance on Tuesday there was also a healthy dose of superstition from Madrid’s all-time top scorer.
Ronaldo was first off the flight to Munich when the team landed in Germany and he posed for a lucky photograph in the tunnel to the arrivals lounge flanked by Casemiro and Marcelo.
It’s the image that has been repeated on the last two away games in the Champions League and both times it has brought a good result.
The picture was first taken in Paris before Real Madrid beat PSG to go through to the quarter-finals. And it was taken again when the team landed in Turin ahead of their 3-0 win over Juventus.
Ronaldo wants as much money as Neymar, who is rumoured to be on Real’s transfer shortlist
Salah’s recent performances have poked the tiger’s cage just as the door is about to be opened
Ronaldo is known to be superstitious around the big games – after winning the Champions League in Lisbon in 2014 he and his team-mates insisted on the same pilot flying them to the Milan and Cardiff finals.
What the three amigos want now is a fourth identical shot in Kiev next month.
The Red Messi could be there waiting for Madrid in Ukraine but that is a problem for Zinedine Zidane to solve another day. For now he is grateful for the Egyptian’s performance has poked the tiger’s cage just as door is about to be opened once more.