Madrid - Cristiano Ronaldo returned to Madrid on Tuesday after the Portuguese football federation had confirmed his badly sprained right ankle, which will need two more weeks to recover. Ronaldo, 24, had been called up by Portugal to play in next week's World Cup play-offs against Bosnia, despite his club, Ral Madrid, insisting that he was injured.
The world's most expensive player flew off to Lisbon early on Tuesday for medical checks, which confirmed to the Portuguese federation that he was not in condition to return to action until the end of November.
Real were keen for him to return straight away to Madrid in order to continue with his recuperation, instead of staying in Lisbon to cheer on his compatriots, who face Bosnia in the first leg on Saturday.
Real president Florentino Perez put a private airplane at Ronaldo's disposal. Perez smashed the world tranfer record in June when he paid Manchester United 94 million euros (140.56 million dollars) for Ronaldo.
Ronaldo originally suffered the sprained ankle playing for Real against Olympique Marseille on September 30. He aggravated the injury playing for Portugal against Hungary on October 10.
Real hope he will be fit for the November 29 "clasico" away to Spanish leaders Barcelona.
