The 45-year-old, former Valencia, Levante and Mallorca player, revealed some background on the elbow he gave to Cristiano Ronaldo. In his opinion it was completely involuntary
Football is a contact sport. There are contacts that are quickly forgotten and others that remain firmly imprinted in the memory. A elbowedwhich led to none other than Cristiano Ronaldo bleeding, certainly falls into the second category. The protagonist of the episode was the class of 1980 David Navarro: Spanish, former defender, who ended his career in 2018 – but the risk of interrupting it early was high.
Navarro recalls on CR7: “I didn’t want to hit him”
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It was 2013 and Levante and Real Madrid crossed paths. In a shirt that strongly recalls the colors of Barcelona, as if to highlight a well-known football rivalry, Navarro jumps and crosses Cristiano Ronaldo in the third minute of the game. The first has a wide elbow and impacts the Portuguese’s forehead. The latter will be seriously injured and he will lose some blood after the clash.
The 45-year-old tried to reconstruct the dynamics like this: “I’ll make that play with Juanfranwith Christian and I come from behind. It’s a ball that I think was a throw-in and I jumped over Juanfran and when I felt pushed I hit Christian. If you see the action, I watch the ball all the time. In fact, I don’t even realize I hit him and, well, any more and they put me in prison. That’s how it went.”
The prison of the press
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The media of the time, less updated than now, still knew hit and do harm. This is what happened to Navarro, forced to perpetually apologize for what remains, according to him, a mere coincidence.
The Madrid press would have railed against the defender: “There they asked me to go to prison“. Reiterating the total lack of intention of his gesture towards Cristiano Ronaldo, the former Levante player also underlines the difference in his behavior from that of others who often intentionally cause harm on the pitch after a clash.
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