Ancelotti plays down Ronaldo injury

Real Madrid coach Carlo Ancelotti played down the injury-enforced substitution of Cristiano Ronaldo during yesterday’s 5-0 win over Almeria, insisting it was only “a little problem”.

The Portugal forward, fresh from almost single-handedly getting his country to the World Cup finals with a brilliant hat-trick in the midweek play-off second leg against Sweden, opened the scoring with less than three minutes on the clock at the Estadio de los Juegos Mediterraneos before signalling to the bench early in the second half that he could not continue.