Christiano Ronaldo handed 5 match ban for pushing referee

-Ronaldo handed 5 matches game ban for assaulting match official.

-Barcelona have announced the €40m signing of Brazilian and former Tottenham player, Paulinho from Chinese side Guangzhou Evergrande.

Real Madrid forward, Christiano Ronaldo has bagged a 5 match suspension following his red card in Sunday’s super cup clash with Barcelona for pushing the center referee.

The Portuguese star received the suspension for pushing the referee in Sunday’s 3-1 win over Barcelona at Camp Nou with match referee, Ricardo de Burgos Bengoetxea,  including it in his post-match report as earlier reported by Naija News.

The ban would however only affect La Liga games with Madrid still able to call upon their star forward for European games.

Ronaldo returned to training later than his team-mates after appearing for Portugal in the Confederations Cup earlier this summer.

The 32-year-old is, therefore, behind in terms of fitness and started on the bench as Real retained the UEFA Super Cup with victory over Manchester United in Skopje last Tuesday.

As reported by goal.com, Zidane said of Ronaldo’s suspension, “We can’t change it and we’ll try to win [the Supercopa] on Wednesday without him. Even with 10 men, we still fought and we believed in the win until the end.”

With a two-goal advantage to take into the second leg of the Supercopa and also playing at home, Madrid will however be clear favourites to claim the trophy as coach Zinedine Zidane has plenty of talent in reserve, with Luka Modric back from a ban and Marco Asensio in line for a start following his own superb strike in the first leg at Camp Nou.

With the suspension, Ronaldo will miss four Liga fixtures- the game away to Deportivo, an home game against Levante which will then be followed by the visit of Valencia and then another away game at Real Sociedad but Madrid should still have enough depth in their squad to navigate these fixtures.

The ban should afford Ronaldo a little more time to rest and build match fitness following his engagements with the Portuguese national team during the summer break.

Meanwhile, Barcelona have announced the €40m signing of Brazilian and former Tottenham player, Paulinho from Chinese side Guangzhou Evergrande with many fans and observers struggling to understand what the new signing will bring to the Catalan club.

Recall the Catalan club recently lost Neymar to PSG in a world record transfer with the Catalan club saying they wont be under any pressure or in haste to bring in a replacement for their former star.