Someone's spotted something about Cristiano Ronaldo’s ridiculous bicycle kick which makes it even better

Cristiano Ronaldo’s sensational goal against Juventus in the Champions League is the kind to make you wonder why people even bother trying to play against him.

It’s proper ‘go home and take your ball with you’ stuff, on a par with Zlatan Ibrahimovic’s famous overhead kick against England, but the situation was even more high-stakes.

Real Madrid were 1-0 up against their Italian rivals in a Champions League quarter-final first leg match in Turin when the ball found its way to Ronaldo about six feet off the ground.

Most people would attempt a header from that position. Not Ronaldo, though, and we should have seen it coming for one key reason.

Read more: The 10 best bicycle kicks in football history

Ronaldo is known for constantly working on every single facet of his game, never settling for what he has achieved.

That means when he does something in a match, it’ll rarely be an accident. And so it proved in Turin.

Plenty of people have noticed an image from Real Madrid’s pre-match training session which shows he was more than ready to pull off the ridiculous bicycle kick.

Here’s a still of the goal itself…

And here’s Ronaldo in training – in almost exactly the same pose.

What’s even more remarkable is that this isn’t even the first time Ronaldo has very visibly repeated his old tricks.

Two years ago, during Real Madrid’s last-16 victory over AS Roma, he cut inside from the left with a well-timed flick before firing into the far corner.

And nearly a decade before that, when he was still a Manchester United player, Ronaldo scored a goal against Dynamo Kiev in which he… well, you already know, don’t you.

Proof, if it were ever needed, that Ronaldo is a robot and the world is a simulation.

(Images: Getty)