Ronaldo, Man United and the remarriage that never should have been

The day is the 26th August 2021 and Cristiano Ronaldo, with his heart set on a departure from Serie A giants Juventus, has devised an exit plan alongside his super-agent Jorge Mendes - the infamous number seven is coming back to Manchester.

As the rumours transpire, the former Manchester United legend will not be representing his former club, however, but rather their cross-city rivals Manchester City, keen to replace Sergio Agüero in their fresh defence of the Premier League title. 

With terms on the brink of completion, the news was met with ground-shaking furore. From cries of betrayal from the red half of Manchester, through to the puzzlement of the blue half, wondering how compatible Ronaldo would be with the core demands of Pep Guardiola, nobody was quite sure what was going on.

So Man United, alongside the up-for-grabs Ronaldo, fixed it all in less than 24 hours. He would, at City’s expense, be returning to Old Trafford after all. As it should have been…or should it?

As the official announcement of his return, roared on by the euphoria from the United faithful, broke engagement records across Twitter and Instagram, it did feel for a good second that the legendary Portuguese winger wasn’t the only man who was back - United were too.

After a second-placed finish the season prior, playing vintage counter-attacking football under the much-loved Ole Gunnar Solskjær and coupling the feel-good factor with the arrivals of highly-rated Jadon Sancho from Borussia Dortmund and Real Madrid mainstay Raphael Varane, the Red Devils came flying into the new campaign with four wins from five Premier League encounters.

The man himself, donning the number seven shirt once again at Old Trafford, required just 45 minutes to net on his debut, kicking off life back in Manchester with three goals from his first two league appearances.

As the United fans promised, they would be up there, alongside the likes of Man City, Liverpool and Chelsea as direct challengers for the league title. With Ronaldo about, in particular, anything seemed possible and that’s certainly how it would have felt at Carrington.

But this short-lived illusion came at a price as United fell to a more devastating encounter with the truth than Juventus, Ronaldo’s former employees, did.

Recalling a time when the Portugal captain was a ‘Bianconeri’, Juve defender Leonardo Bonucci was very open about what led to his own club’s downfall after nine consecutive Serie A titles.

A smiling Ronaldo in his Juve days

“Cristiano’s presence had a big influence on us,” the Italian defender said. “Just training with him gave us something extra, but subconsciously players started to think his presence alone was enough to win games.”

United certainly toyed with the 37-year-old’s powers as the ex-Juve man came to their rescue in four of their six Champions League group stage encounters against Villarreal and Atalanta with decisive goals in the final ten minutes.

The difference-maker in Europe, it was clear the veteran forward’s shine was beginning to wane, bearing all of Man United’s deepest issues and insecurities. The first of which lies in the heart and soul of the squad, often criticised for having no backbone.

Solskjær thrived in the chaos of Scott McTominay and Fred, intersected by the composed but ageing Nemanja Matic, but the lack of someone who could control moments that threaten to spiral has been apparent since the post-Sir Alex Ferguson era.

Such deficiencies have thwarted United’s capabilities of dominating and a string of marquee signings, like Paul Pogba, Angel Di Maria and indeed Ronaldo, from thriving at the very highest level.

You just wouldn’t get that anywhere else at a so-called top club. From perennial Ligue 1 champions Paris Saint-Germain, right through to ex-employees Real Madrid - the greatest teams are those that create the best conditions for their key players to succeed.

Man United have chosen to turn a blind eye and magic up an exception for years, much to the ongoing frustration of Ronaldo, now reportedly desperate to leave after 12 months.

As results began to sour and United slipped down the table, Solskjær was relieved of his managerial duties. The focus was shoved in the players’ faces - first and foremost Ronaldo’s as the face of the franchise.

A disgruntled Ronaldo looks on as his side, Man United, fall at home to Brighton

Facing two cup exits, a humiliating battering at the hands of bitter rivals Liverpool and an uphill battle to qualify for next season’s Champions League, was Ronaldo part of the problem, or the solution?

The truth is that he was both.

The goods the Portuguese man produced were satisfying in their doses, but never truly sustainable from a more collective point of view, given the squad’s glaring shortcomings.

Ronaldo’s arrival took its toll on Bruno Fernandes' crucial output whilst complicating Marcus Rashford’s route back into the XI, following an early-season surgery.

The Sancho transfer, of whom United had courted for months before relinquishing a staggering £76 million, was another that lost some form of meaning and sense in the wake of the Ronaldo coup, meanwhile the Cavani debacle, dethroned as the number seven before being told to stay put following Barcelona’s interest, left the so-called Red Devils toothless.

United scuppered the foundations laid out in 2021 simply to hijack their noisy neighbours City and squeeze Ronaldo into the fold. Now, they’re paying the price. When Ronaldo didn’t perform, the others weren’t around to lead in his absence and the club suffered as a consequence.

The 20-time English champions went from a title-challenging ‘super team’ to registering the worst league finish in their illustrious Premier League history, dwindling in sixth with a 35-point-gap from the top.

In the aftermath, as one ESPN source reveals, the representative of an unnamed teammate set out to complain about the overuse of Ronaldo’s presence in promotional content. Priorities, eh?

Unfortunately for Ronaldo and fans alike, that’s the culture at the fumbling giant, filled with stars hiding in the shadows of unaccountability. With the same ‘me-first’ attitude, they’ve seen the back of five first-team managers over the years, deemed culpable for the club’s recurring failures.

The great Manchester United are not the like-minded serial-winners Ronaldo once knew and he, alongside his influential agent, no stranger to a deal-gone-wrong with the mega club, should’ve had their wits about them.

Ronaldo with new boss Erik Ten Hag (left)

Keen to satiate his desire for Champions League football and sustained success, the forward has positioned himself on the brink of another exit, handing new manager Erik Ten Hag a true baptism of fire.

As the head coach makes sense of the differing style of players at his disposal, brought to the club by a plethora of managers that were appointed incoherently, the Dutchman is challenged with keeping a lid on a very public fallout between one of the most marketable teams in history and their match in player form.

Not what you want just a couple of months into a career-defining switch, especially off the back of a pair of tarnishing defeats.

In theory, a Ten Hag-Ronaldo divorce wouldn’t necessarily be a bad thing. In the same way that the number seven’s proposed switch to City was questionable, the 37-year-old isn’t exactly tailored to the football that earned the ex-Ajax boss, a disciple of Guardiola's, his reputation.

If rumours are to be believed, Ronaldo knows this all too well, often caught moaning to himself in training over Ten Hag’s tactical instructions, according to renewed leaks from the United dressing room.

But openly admitting that there are problems with the poster boy, who topped United’s goal-scoring charts last season by some distance with 24 goals, is a tricky one for the brand that is Manchester United to disclose.

Following the inquest in response to the 4-0 away defeat to Brentford, the unrest has been deemed too grandiose to hide - Ronaldo really does want out from Old Trafford and United are willing to facilitate things.

But where to?

If elite-level football is what he craves, the likes of Bayern Munich, PSG, Barcelona, Real Madrid and even city-rivals Atlético de Madrid have closed the door on the veteran. Talks with Chelsea have been fruitless too, meanwhile few and far between have the financial firepower to cater for Ronaldo’s heavy wage packet.

Both Mendes and his most famous client will have to think long and hard about where they engineer their next move to, after the lessons extracted from his troubled United return.

In his twilight years, Ronaldo will not have much more time to add to his wondrous contributions to the sport. For the sake of concluding a glittering career on a deserved high, the veteran’s next transfer is crucial.

It is, in fairness, nothing more than a minor detail next to the dwarfing stream of goals, trophies, records and accolades in Ronaldo’s name, but then again, the veteran’s career has always been about the small details.

By Patrick Ribeiro