‘Nobody has stepped up’ to fill Cristiano Ronaldo’s void, admits Luka Modric

Cristiano Ronaldo has said he decided to leave Real Madrid for Juventus after sensing that the Spanish club’s president Florentino Perez no longer saw him as being “indispensable”.

Luka Modric admitted that “nobody has stepped up” and that it is “almost impossible” to fill the void left by Cristiano Ronaldo at Real Madrid.

Madrid have suffered back-to-back defeats to Barcelona and are already 12 points adrift of the Catalan giants in La Liga.

“Cristiano is a player that every team would miss,” Modric said. “Looking for a replacement is almost impossible. Of course we miss him, given everything he did for the club. What the club tried to do was divide the burden among the players, and that isn’t easy.

“Cristiano scored 50 goals, and you can’t find someone else who can do that. Some had to take a step forward, and though not score 50, but at least score 15-20, or even ten goals. This is what we are missing. That’s why I think scoring is our biggest problem this season. Cristiano is not here, so we cannot continue to complain for the next ten years that we don’t have him.

The club has put faith in other players, like Gareth, Asensio, Karim and has bought Mariano and Vinicius, who is doing well for his age. But sometimes things don’t work out as we want”

Madrid take a slender 2-1 aggregate lead into the second leg of their Champions League tie against Ajax, and Modric pointed out that having already endured times of crisis during his seven years at the club, he was confident Santiago Solari’s side would stage a comeback to finer form.

“Real Madrid are always pronounced dead, but always come back,” Modric retorted. ”In 2015, we didn’t win anything, and they still said we were dead. Then you all know what happened afterwards and what we have won since. I believe this team has a very bright future” Modric also leapt to the defence of Gareth Bale, whose agent claimed the club’s fans were a “disgrace” for jeering the Welshman off the pitch when substituted in El Clasico.

“Bale? Sometimes a player runs into this in his career, a time in which he doesn’t feel at his best,” Modric continued.

“Everything passes though. It happened to me in the past. I see him being happy and he has the desire to do well. We cannot forget what Bale has done for the club, as these things can be easy to forget. He wants to work, and he wants to be the same Gareth he has always been”.  – independent.co.uk