Former Newcastle Jets manager Scott Miller has recalled how he was left in awe by Cristiano Ronaldo’s insane regime on a visit to Real Madrid’s training ground once.
Miller, who is a coach in the NPL in Melbourne, used to be involved in a coaching capacity at Premier League side Fulham and was asked to join new signing Mahamadou Diarra in Spain to do some training while the Malian player was at the west London club.
He retold the story to Adam Peacock on the Fox Football Podcast about how an early-morning arrival one day meant he managed to run into the former Real Madrid icon and see his dedication to his fitness first hand.
“I remember I went to Real Madrid years ago with a player called Mahamadou Diarra,” he said. “He was a Galactico and an amazing player and we signed him at Fulham.
“He had to go to Spain for a few weeks so I joined him, on one of those ‘I’ll help you’ trips. All expenses paid, we trained three or four times a day and ate beautiful food at night. If you’re sitting at a dining table with a Galactico of Real Madrid, you feel like a rockstar, so it wasn’t a bad couple of weeks.
“We trained at Real Madrid’s training ground every day because he’s a God there. And the first day, we get picked up and driven there in this car and the driveway to the training ground is quite long.
“I see this stick figure miles away, this tiny little figure training. Bang! Hitting these balls. I said ‘who’s that?’ and he says ‘it’s Cristiano’ and I said ‘who?’ and he said ‘Cristiano Ronaldo’.
“I looked at my watch and it was like 7.15 in the morning. I said ‘what’s he doing?’, because in Europe training usually starts at 10.30am, players in for 8.30/9am, training at 10.30am. It’s basically a part-time job – the best job in the world starting at 10.30am.
“So he’s there at 7.15am and I’m thinking ‘what is this? What’s going on?’ And he goes ‘every morning he’ll be there. Every morning’. It’s either in the gym or on the pitch every morning and this was back in 2012 I think.
“He’s obviously conditioned to do that. We would then go and do our gym workout and he would come in and join the rest of the team for breakfast, and he’s already done a session. And that was Ronaldo.
“And we’re talking about COVID and the impacts of training or lack of ability to do it and then I’m looking at one of the best players, if not the best player in the world out there training by himself at 7.15am when he’s got everything in the world that he needs.
“So that to me is inspiration enough and I tell that story to kids and they don’t want to go home. They want to train everyday. Because that’s what it takes.”