I won’t put his performance the other night down to any decline because even in his prime CL years at Real Madrid, he had similar performances on rare occasions. In that CL campaign where he scored 2 goals against us at the Allianz (one of them that preposterous over-head kick) he was pretty quiet in the subsequent semi-finals and final. The only difference is that Real had World-Class players in other positions that could pull the weight whenever CR had an off night. At Juve, it’s Ronaldo or bust which is insane when you factor in that he’s 36. So although he was awful the other night, with a little more support, we would have easily gotten past the likes of Ajax and Lyon when he actually performed.
I also think playing so many successive games over the last 2 months made him look more fatigued and sluggish than he has been for these ties in recent years.