Turin (Italy) (AFP)
Portuguese Juventus Turin star Cristiano Ronaldo, in quarantine for two weeks after positive Covid-19 tests, is again absent from the list of players summoned for the clash against Barcelona on Wednesday night in the Champions League.
The 35-year-old striker, top scorer in the history of the Champions League, exceeded the minimum quarantine time of ten days but needed a negative test, at the latest by Tuesday evening, the day before the match , to hope to find his lifelong rival, Lionel Messi.
The reunion between the two legends is postponed to the return match on December 8 in Catalonia.
The player and his club waited in vain for the essential negative test on Tuesday.
According to Portuguese television TVI, CR7 has already carried out 18 Covid-19 tests since it tested positive with the Portuguese selection.
The five-fold Golden Ball, who shows no symptoms, lives in isolation in his Turin home from where he posts images on social networks showing him keeping in shape.
"I feel good and healthy. Go Juve," he wrote on Wednesday in a first message to his more than 240 million followers on Instagram.
He then added a second message in capital letters: "PCR is bullshit" ("PCR IS BULLSHIT"), before removing it after leaving it for 90 minutes.
The match against Barcelona (kick off at 9:00 p.m. / 8:00 p.m. GMT) is the fourth that the Portuguese will miss, now hoped by his club for the next league meeting, Sunday against La Spezia.
The double confrontation between Juve and Barça, in the group stage of the C1, constitutes the first face-to-face between Ronaldo and Messi since the clasicos of La Liga, at the time when the Portuguese played for Real Madrid (until 'in 2018).
Defender Leonardo Bonucci, uncertain, on the other hand, appears in the list of summons published by the bianconero club on its website a few hours before the kickoff of Juventus-Barcelona.
© 2020 AFP