It may now all feel like a trick of the mind but, for a fleeting September evening, the plan appeared to be coming together. On Cristiano Ronaldo’s second home debut for Manchester United, he scored two goals against Newcastle and United soared to the top of the Premier League table.
In the stands, the camera panned to Sir Alex Ferguson, the man who first signed Ronaldo in 2003 and then intervened again, by calling Ronaldo’s agent Jorge Mendes, to steer the Portuguese forward back to Old Trafford in August. In an executive box, Ronaldo’s mother, Dolores, grinned at the goals and wrapped herself in a United scarf gifted to the family by a supporter.
Fans flocked to Old Trafford. One newspaper report claimed that tickets for the Newcastle fixture had been on sale via the black market for more than £2,500. On social media, United’s players — new and old — cherished Ronaldo’s return. Jesse Lingard posted a picture, showing himself as a young boy training alongside Ronaldo during the Portuguese striker’s first spell at Old Trafford. Marcus Rashford wrote: “Wow wow wow, he’s home,” along with a love-heart emoji. Fernandes dubbed himself “Agent Bruno” on Twitter after helping persuade Ronaldo to reject Manchester City and return to United.
Former United captain Roy Keane, not exactly a man prone to sentimental outpourings, shared a picture with his arm around a younger Ronaldo. The ex-United goalkeeper Peter Schmeichel popped a bottle of champagne on social media.
In the newspapers, we were told how eagerly United’s long-serving receptionist Kath Phipps was awaiting her own reunion with Ronaldo. For the modern United, this was a move designed to bring certainty both on and off the field. For a team that finished second in the Premier League last season and fell at the final hurdle in the Europa League, here was a born winner to elevate the club from pretenders to contenders. Not even a banner that read “Believe Kathryn Mayorga”, which flew over Old Trafford on the day they defeated Newcastle, dimmed the buzz from United and Ronaldo. Mayorga had alleged that Ronaldo raped her at a Las Vegas hotel in 2009. She reportedly reached an out-of-court settlement with Ronaldo in 2010 but sought to reopen the case in 2018. He has always strongly denied the allegations and has not faced charges. At Old Trafford, the hero worship remained unabated.
By late January, however, the picture is altogether different. United are seventh in the table and 21 points behind leaders Manchester City. Wednesday evening yielded the latest melodramatics from Ronaldo, on an evening that in many ways encapsulated his experience since returning to United. Ronaldo and United collectively and individually toiled for the first half, then Ronaldo produced a moment of world-class quality with a chest pass to tee up United’s second goal.
A slew of headlines were then instantly written as Ronaldo petulantly threw down his jacket when interim manager Ralf Rangnick decided to substitute him after 71 minutes with United two goals up. Behind the dugout, one Brentford supporter delivered his own verdict: “You’re finished Ronaldo, cry baby Ronaldo!”
By signing the most famous footballer on the planet, these were the affectations and theatrics United anticipated. Ronaldo’s deal commanded a financial package of £60 million over two seasons — with the option of a third — but United also bought up one of the most famous and lucrative brands on the planet.
Ronaldo’s Instagram account boasts 392 million followers, in addition to 150 million on Facebook and almost 97 million on Twitter. United’s combined following across the three channels stands at 157 million, which pales in comparison to Ronaldo’s 639 million. Paul Pogba has 86 million across the platforms, while David de Gea has 40.7 million, Rashford has 26.4 million and Bruno Fernandes 17.3 million. By modern metrics, Ronaldo counters the old cliche about no player being bigger than a club. United, therefore, hoped to enter a different stratosphere both on the balance sheet and the team sheet. They have certainly grown on social media with their Instagram account rising from 43 million before his arrival to 54 million now.
What has followed can only be described as a disappointment. On a personal level, Ronaldo has scored 14 goals this season and is United’s top scorer. Yet the broader picture shows a United team in seventh position, which has taken only 28 points from eighteen Premier League matches since he arrived, dropping just under half of the points available.
Ole Gunnar Solskjaer lost his job within nine Premier League matches of Ronaldo’s return and successor Rangnick has struggled to secure improvement in terms of results and is experiencing the same tactical and emotional conundrum that the Norwegian found in Ronaldo.
It was hoped that Ronaldo’s presence would focus those around him but Jadon Sancho has only scored once while sharing a pitch with Ronaldo, while Mason Greenwood, Rashford, Edinson Cavani and Fernandes have managed only two each. It would be unfair to place the blame for all those individual failings at Ronaldo’s door but few would seek to argue the transfer has gone as hoped. Ronaldo’s exasperation has boiled up, storming down the tunnel after several Premier League games, and last week he warned the club should not tolerate finishing outside of the top three positions in the Premier League. He has since admonished the club’s “new generation” for their inability to take feedback, before offering up his own dose of immaturity against Brentford.
United’s issues are, as ever, multi-faceted but The Athletic has spoken to numerous sources close to the dressing room and the hierarchy to detail the full story behind a return going wrong for the most celebrated signing in the history of Manchester United.
Speak to some of those who work on a daily basis with Ronaldo and not everyone agrees that the player is causing issues for United. One coach recently confided that Ronaldo is a “class act” and argued that the player is keeping up his end of the bargain. “It’s the other ones who aren’t,” the source concluded.
The case for the defence is straightforward, as Ronaldo applies himself in training, maintains a pristine physique and scores significant goals at crucial times for United. Ronaldo can justifiably point to the match-shaping or match-winning goals against Newcastle, West Ham, Tottenham, Arsenal and Norwich in the Premier League, while United’s Champions League group stage required decisive goals from Ronaldo after the 78-minute mark in four separate games to secure the points needed to progress.
Whether they return to the Champions League next season is still to be seen and Ronaldo’s salary is understood to drop by 25 per cent if they don’t make the top four, although United do sometimes operate more tapered agreements for individual players. Gestifute did not respond when the figure was put to them.
Any discussion of Ronaldo should also factor in an extreme season of underperformance from many United players. As a source argues: “Look down the squad and find a player without an issue; whether it be form, injuries, contracts, team spirit or overall quality. You are not left with many players.”
The cumulative demons and oddities have collided for United this season; whether they be a post-Euros hangover for Harry Maguire and Luke Shaw, injury problems for Cavani and Raphael Varane, uncertainty over the futures of Paul Pogba, Jesse Lingard and Anthony Martial, alarming slumps in form from Aaron Wan-Bissaka and Rashford, or the inability to make an impact as a new United signing experienced by Donny van de Beek and Sancho.
Yet while Ronaldo the individual has excelled in moments, there have rarely been complete performances by United. This had, it should be said, been a trend of Solskjaer’s reign long before Ronaldo arrived but it was still startling to see the pace at which the tenure collapsed following Ronaldo’s return.
Solskjaer had only nine Premier League games to coach Ronaldo. The Norwegian won three and lost five of those as United scored 13 goals and conceded 19 goals, including fours against both Leicester and Watford and five against Liverpool. It was a spectacular demise for a coach who appeared as starry-eyed as everyone else associated with United when he first teased the forward’s return to the club at a Friday morning news conference at Carrington in late August.
Solskjaer had made a phone call to United’s then executive vice-chairman Ed Woodward to give his go-ahead for the move, although Woodward himself is understood to have strongly encouraged United’s owners, the Glazer family, into executing the transfer. The Glazers had close experience of how an ageing star name can inspire a sports team. In March 2020, the Glazer-owned Tampa Bay Buccaneers acquired quarterback Tom Brady, then 42, as a free agent and he led the Bucs to his seventh Super Bowl. United hoped for a similar impact from Ronaldo.
Solskjaer’s personal appetite for the transfer differs depending upon who you speak to; some sources familiar with the club argue that he saw the potential consequences of disrupting a project built around younger attacking players. Yet club sources insist Solskjaer was absolutely behind the signing and actually wanted Ronaldo back at the club one year earlier. He even told a crowd of supporters on one occasion how he regarded Ronaldo as the club’s best-ever player. Indeed, anyone who witnessed the mischief in Solskjaer’s eyes at that news conference, safe in the knowledge United had gazumped City, would find it hard to believe the Norwegian needed much persuading. Earlier the same week, Solskjaer held a meeting with senior members of his coaching staff, where they agreed United could not allow Ronaldo to play for their nearest rivals.
Equally, while Ronaldo did hold extensive talks with City and left Juventus team-mates with the impression he would sign for Pep Guardiola, sources have since suggested he became concerned that he may not be guaranteed a starting place. The Athletic can further reveal that City’s doubts about the transfer were further heightened as they had originally anticipated that Raheem Sterling may leave the club for Barcelona, creating a space for Ronaldo, only for Sterling to decide to stay. City did not have bidders at the appropriate level for the likes of Riyad Mahrez or Bernardo Silva, both of whom they would have considered selling at the right price and, as such, Guardiola doubted whether there was room for Ronaldo. Sources close to City continue to insist that they pulled out of a deal for Ronaldo, although at United they consider this to be a face-saving version of events.
Ronaldo’s representatives Gestifute did not respond when approached for comment.
Ferguson, now a member of United’s largely inactive Football Board, also put in a call both to Joel Glazer and to Ronaldo’s agent Mendes, although sources say the former United manager did not actually speak to Ronaldo before the move was concluded. That is despite Ronaldo subsequently dedicating the transfer to Ferguson on his Instagram page.
At 4.53pm on August 27, United announced the return of Ronaldo, for an initial £12.8 million fee from Juventus and in doing so re-signed a player who scored 118 goals in 292 appearances for United between 2003 and 2009. United’s announcement tweet has had 840,000 retweets, as well as 1.9 million likes.
After already signing Varane, a serial Champions League winner from Real Madrid, and Sancho, a long-term target from Borussia Dortmund, United’s expectation became instant success. Solskjaer had a positive relationship with Ronaldo, after playing alongside him previously and then coaching United’s forwards as part of Ferguson’s backroom team during the 2007-08 double-winning season. Ronaldo also had former team-mates on Solskjaer’s staff in Michael Carrick and technical director Darren Fletcher. It was Fletcher who greeted Ronaldo at the airport when he landed in Manchester.
After two goals on his debut against Newcastle, talk of Ronaldo’s impact only grew. Lee Grant, United’s veteran goalkeeper, revealed how United players had seen Ronaldo shun the usual apple crumble dessert and followed suit. The Athletic has been told how players followed Ronaldo’s lead in his approach to sports science and nutrition, with one example being players who decided to stop having sugar in their tea or coffee. This was the honeymoon period. Ronaldo did an interview with a major broadcaster and then asked people afterwards how his English compared to his previous period at the club, politeness personified.
Rapidly, however, matters frayed around the edges. During United’s 2-1 defeat at Swiss side Young Boys in the Champions League, Ronaldo opened the scoring but was later substituted by Solskjaer as United were reduced to 10 men. Ronaldo and Fernandes spent the latter stages of the match in the coach’s technical area, an encroachment upon which former United player Rio Ferdinand felt Solskjaer ought to have clamped down.
Solskjaer defended Ronaldo but then experienced another bout of melodrama when he rested Ronaldo for the home draw against Everton in September. United drew the match 1-1 and despite playing the final half-hour as a substitute, Ronaldo disappeared down the tunnel at Old Trafford alone and at speed at the final whistle. The pressure heightened when video footage emerged of Ferguson in conversation with the former UFC champion Khabib Nurmagomedov, where he suggested Solskjaer had been wrong to rest Ronaldo.
Even as United toiled, there were electric moments. Ronaldo scored late, shirt-ripping winners at home against Villarreal and Atalanta, before essentially keeping Solskjaer in a job by twice equalising in the away fixture against Atalanta in November and also scoring one and making one for Cavani in a 3-0 victory at Tottenham.
Solskjaer publicly described Ronaldo as United’s answer to NBA superstar Michael Jordan. United’s social media account went into overdrive, posting about one player so much that some online supporters began to refer to CR7 as PR7. On one occasion this month, the club’s social account asked “Anyone else go about their day saying Siuuuuuu 100+ times?”, accompanied by Ronaldo’s trademark pirouette and celebration. When Ronaldo returned to the United teamsheet for Wednesday night’s fixture at Brentford, United pushed out a tweet of Ronaldo in the club’s third kit and offering 25 per cent discount on a replica jersey.
Ronaldo, incidentally, has not tagged the @ManUtd Twitter handle on one occasion since signing for the club, although he has tagged both the club and team-mates on Instagram, where fellow United players have experienced a spike in following by mere association with Ronaldo.
By November, Ronaldo’s advocates argued the team would be in an even more desperate state without him, while his critics debated whether he was solving problems created by his very presence in the team. By the end of Solskjaer’s tenure, Ronaldo was among those players who harboured concerns about the quality of the team’s preparation, while Solskjaer, deprived of his dream job, had developed second thoughts about the suitability of the signing.
When Ronaldo returned to Old Trafford in August, United hoped that the mere presence of a five-time Ballon d’Or winner would prove a stimulating education for younger talents such as Greenwood, Sancho and Rashford. The reality, however, is that Ronaldo did not come to hold anybody’s hand.
Upon his arrival, Ronaldo said: “People think I am coming from the heart or ‘blah blah blah’, but I am coming here to show that I am still capable.” For Ronaldo, a ticking clock hangs over his playing days and he wants more medals, both individually and collectively.
There was, therefore, always the potential for tremors when you place the man who has to win trophies into a club that has long since forgotten the art. United have not won a trophy for five years now and have reached the quarter-finals of the Champions League only twice in the past decade.
Ronaldo’s exasperation with United’s underperformance has visibly spilled out. Against both Liverpool and Newcastle, Ronaldo arguably ought to have been sent off for reckless challenges. When his body language overwhelmed him in the 1-1 draw at St James’ Park, Ronaldo’s former team-mate Gary Neville admonished him and Fernandes on Sky Sports.
“They’re the two senior players in that dressing room,” Neville said. “It’s devastating for the younger players if the two best players in the team are looking at the others as if they’re not good enough.”
He added: “It’s annoyed me for about two months. It’s devastating when the best players in the team are giving that look and that body language. They have to be a father, a grandparent.”
The Athletic has since been told that several of United’s younger players feel Ronaldo can be difficult to approach, with sources suggesting Cavani, even in broken English, is a more unifying presence. During his period at Juventus, regular observers felt that less experienced players such as Paulo Dybala shrank in Ronaldo’s presence, while defender Leonardo Bonucci has since claimed that Juventus are “more of a team” since Ronaldo departed. Juventus are, however, fifth in Serie A without him and won two Serie A titles in three years during Ronaldo’s period at the club.
The matter has not been helped within games, with Ronaldo’s flapping arms and killer glares leading some players to wilt rather than bloom in his presence at United. Well-connected sources have compared Ronaldo’s approach to that of Zlatan Ibrahimovic at AC Milan, where the Swede has been credited as a “massive influence” in developing the spirit and unity of a young Milan side. Yet even Ibrahimovic was driven to distraction at Old Trafford, subsequently complaining about being charged on his payslip for a juice from a hotel minibar and describing the club as having a “small, closed mentality”.
On a personal level, Ronaldo has naturally blended with Portugal team-mates Diogo Dalot and Fernandes, although several sources have suggested cliques have split the United dressing room. Equally, Ronaldo is not alone in believing several of United’s younger players ought to be more focused. Several members of Solskjaer’s backroom staff shared Ronaldo’s view and it is a widely held perspective at United, for instance, that the world is Greenwood’s oyster if he further increases his concentration and application.
Ronaldo did not speak specifically about Greenwood but he said: “I remember, when I was 18, some older players spoke with me and I took that as having to improve, they know more than me as they have more bad moments. This new generation in general don’t accept that if you criticise them. I have kids, I know. They do the opposite.” He can remember occasions when he was tested aggressively in training as a teenager, as Nicky Butt told The Athletic previously.
In the United dressing room, Ronaldo’s words were noted and did not go down well with everyone, although The Athletic has learned that at least one high-profile senior player was very supportive of the sentiments echoed by Ronaldo. This player has previously attempted to be nurturing with United’s younger players and came to the conclusion that Ronaldo’s tough love was necessary.
At the United training ground, Ronaldo drives in every morning, usually followed by a big security car. Not one for bear hugs and handshakes, he is more of a coy participant. He has, at times, made significant interventions, notably in one attempt to rally the players behind Solskjaer as the Norwegian’s reign teetered in October. On another occasion, a United player confided in Ronaldo how he intended to approach Solskjaer due to the player’s frustration with being in and out of the team in autumn. The player had planned on an aggressive approach with the manager but after a half-hour discussion with Ronaldo, the player was advised to go a little more politely and to bear in mind the stressful situation Solskjaer was experiencing. It was a productive meeting.
In general, however, the consensus is that Ronaldo is somebody who you learn from by observation rather than engagement. One source says: “Players should be studying what he eats, when he works out, how he handles his recuperation and the extra steps he takes after training.” Fabio Paratici, the former chief football officer at Juventus, said: “Champions like Ronaldo are like thoroughbred horses, the ones that are a pleasure to watch on your ranch or in the pasture. It’s like having a painting by Picasso at home and getting to see it every day. If it becomes the kind of situation that gets taken for granted, you’re the problem.”
Adam Crafton(Other contributors: Laurie Whitwell, Carl Anka, James Horncastle, David Ornstein)