Bengaluru, March 29: Recently Real Madrid defender Nacho backed Cristiano Ronaldo, slamming the critics of the world-class Portuguese star. "The truth is that he scores everything he touches. We finished the match with the Spain national team [against Germany] and saw that he had scored twice in five minutes with Portugal. That is great for us. I hope he maintains this level until the end of the season," Nacho told Goal.com.

Nacho also said that his stats is enough to prove that he is very different from others. He said, "I do not understand how people can doubt Ronaldo. He is the one who always makes the difference, he has goal stats in his career that are not normal for a player. I do not understand how there can be people doubting him. The commitment he has to this club is 100 percent and I, as his teammate, think there is nowhere better for him than Real Madrid."

Nacho admitted that Paris-Saint Germain (PSG) was favourite before their double-leg encounters in the round-of-16 of the 2017/18 UEFA Champions League. Speaking about that match, "There are times when teams have bad moments. We are people and it is true that before playing against PSG they were labelled as favourites, but we have always shown that we are competitive. We had full confidence in ourselves, even when taking into account who we were facing. We shut up many people with those two wins. I think they were some of our best games this year, and we're happy.

Nacho claimed they have the opportunity to win this season's UCL crown despite the fact that it has not been the best domestic season for them. He said, "Even so, it has not been the best of seasons because of what has happened in La Liga and the Copa del Rey, but not all seasons can be a 10 like last year. Now we have the opportunity to continue in our competition [the Champions League]."

Speaking about their rival club Barcelona, who is performing superbly in every platform of this season, the 28-year old said, "It's true that they are very good in La Liga, in the Copa final and in the Champions quarter-final round, like us. But we do not think about them, honestly."

Talking about this season's UCL, Nacho claimed, "We want to play well against a complicated opponent like Juventus [in the quarter-finals] and move forward one step at a time. Who knows what will happen, but if we win another Champions League it would be spectacular."

Recently, Barcelona centre-back Gerard Pique revealed that they have created a secret WhatsApp group for some Spanish national team footballers who play for Real Madrid or Barcelona. Pique also revealed that he and his Barcelona members troll the Madrid's Spaniards for their current season performances.

While Nacho didn't talk about that WhatsApp group, he said that it didn't affect their healthy relationship. "I talk to Pique about many things. I'm not going to talk about the WhatsApp group because he is the one who has to talk about it. He said that last year we were kidding them about how we were going, and this year it's the opposite. But seriously, these are things that happen in football, especially between friends and in our case because we are all players. The relationship is very good and that is healthy, among other things, a positive coexistence in the national team," Nacho signed off.