Cristiano Ronaldo is the ultimate footballing machine.

It's astonishing to think that the Juventus star is one of the finest physical specimens in the beautiful game despite now being closer to his 40th birthday than his 30th. He really is from another planet.

However, the saying goes that the most important muscle in football is your brain and make no mistake that Ronaldo isn't simply a case of matter over mind and thighs over thinking.

Ronaldo's mental strength

Well, for starters, it's the dedication and drive that comes with Ronaldo's attitude towards the game that sees him arrive at training the earliest and hop in ice baths in the middle of the night.

And without Ronaldo's incredible perception of the game that he's mastered, he wouldn't have established himself as one of the most underrated playmakers of the modern era.

And while those factors are all worthy of praise, we've decided to focus on a more specific area of Ronaldo's mental strength this week: leadership and motivation.

Ronaldo's brilliant leadership

Now, it goes without saying that if you're talking about Ronaldo, then comparisons to Lionel Messi are inevitably going to raise their head and the debate is pretty clear when it comes to captaincy.

Don't get it twisted, the Barcelona captain is by no means a terrible leader, but I think we've all seen enough footage to know that Ronaldo has the edge when it comes to geeing up his teammates.

Whether that's basically coaching Portugal at Euro 2016 or hyping up the Juventus squad for a Champions League comeback, you know that Ronaldo has the motivational skills under pressure.

Ronaldo's 2016 final speech

But one moment that underpins Ronaldo's fantastic leadership doesn't get talked about enough and it's remerged on social media this week: his half-time speech at the 2016 Champions League final.

Not ringing a bell? Well, it was the dramatic night at the San Siro that culminated in Ronaldo scoring the winning penalty in a shootout with Atletico Madrid to retain their European dominance.

But their victory didn't come without some Ronaldo motivation along the way, so be sure to check out the footage of the Ballon d'Or winner passing on his advice to Zinedine Zidane's side.

You know we were talking about mentality? Uh huh, uh huh.

An inspirational leader

I'm sure we're not alone in naming our favourite part of the speech as Ronaldo essentially telling the Real Madrid squad that obstacles such as tiredness and adversity can often be psychological.

At the end of a gruelling season, it must have been the sort of advice that would have gotten the Real players to grit their teeth and throw the kitchen sink at another 45 minutes of action.

And although Yannick Carrasco would ultimately score an equaliser for Los Rojiblancos along the way, it was indeed Real who held strong to get their hands on 'Big Ears'.

We're not trying to say it was all down to Ronaldo's speech, far from it, but try telling us that getting a piece of advice like that from one of the greatest athletes of all time wouldn't hype you up...