The second love story between Cristiano Ronaldo and Manchester United seems to be coming to an end. After a disappointing season without qualifying for the Champions League, the Portuguese has expressed his desire to leave, but the English club does not want to part with his goalscorer so easily.
Source: AFP
Ronaldo returned as a hero last summer to the ‘Red Devils’ to continue his extraordinary career, a team in which he played between 2003 and 2009 and in which he became one of the best players in the world.
On September 11, 2021, he officially marked his return with a resounding double against Newcastle in the Premier League, before an already conquered crowd.
Less than a year later, the Portuguese already wants a divorce. The arrival at the end of April of the Dutch coach Erik Ten Hag predicted a difficult fit for CR7 in the new system. High pressure and great sense of team, precepts that have always been conspicuous by the absence of him in the Portuguese game. Ronaldo has always lacked defensive involvement and has loved being the center of attention.
But Manchester United do not want to get rid of the author of 24 goals last season. It was Ronaldo, still on a one-year contract, who asked to leave. His last message to the club’s management, which was intended to be subliminal, turned out to be highly toxic.
– “Unacceptable” –
The Portuguese left Old Trafford, along with other players, ten minutes before the end of the friendly played this Sunday by his team against Rayo Vallecano, which caused the anger of Ten Hag.
“I told them that it was unacceptable, that we are a team and that we have to stay until the end,” he declared after the game.
However, divorce seems dangerous. Above all, for Cristiano Ronaldo who, at 37 years old, attracts less and less the big European clubs.
The 6 biggest teams in England have spent significant amounts to sign at least one striker, as have others on the continent such as Paris SG, Barcelona or Bayern Munich. But, Ronaldo continues without a clear suitor.
The priority is first to find a prestigious club that can pay for his second year of contract at Manchester United and offer him a substantial salary. Currently, he earns 500,000 pounds a week ($610,000).
Some routes -Chelsea, Atlético, Bayern Munich- were unsuccessfully explored by his agent Jorge Mendes.
For his part, Erik Ten Hag has shown his desire to stay with Ronaldo, but demands that he return to his best physical level, after injuring himself several times last season.
The Dutch coach also intends to improve the mediocre offensive performance of the Red Devils since the arrival of the Portuguese. Ronaldo was the only one to exceed ten goals in the English league with 18 goals, almost a third of Manchester United’s total (57 in total), the lowest figure since the 2016/17 season.
– Insults –
In the transfer market there are no longer many scorers of international stature and, at the moment, there is a certain immobility. Retaining Ronaldo or ensuring a smooth exit looms as a pressing need for Manchester United.
In addition, Ronaldo will not make concessions on the competitiveness of his possible next club, nor on the protection of his family life. The Portuguese has just rejected an offer of 210 million pounds from Saudi Arabia (253 million dollars), since it would not have been a good sporting choice less than four months before his great goal: to play the World Cup in Qatar.
Ronaldo also had to give up pre-season training abroad in July due to family problems, three months after the death of his baby.
Despite his competitive spirit and personal struggles, Ronaldo was the most insulted player on Twitter between the start of last season and January, with 12,520 tweets against him, according to a report by the British media regulator Ofcom and the Alan Institute. Turing.
