Man Utd signing Cristiano Ronaldo was only ever a ‘nostaglia’ trip and was never going to turn them into title contenders. Except at the time.
A quick question…
Will all those sycophantic pundits, journalists and Piers Morgans be apologising to Erik ten Hag for suggesting he ‘disrespected’ Cristiano Ronaldo by not playing him against Tottenham, considering he has since confirmed that the Portuguese actually refused to come on as a substitute? Nope? Fan club membership too lucrative? Very well.
Nostalgia trip
It is interesting to read Dave Kidd’s claim in The Sun that ‘bringing back Cristiano Ronaldo always was about nostalgia’. Mainly because the very same Dave Kidd wrote the following on August 30 of last year:
‘This season, United will become a must-watch once again, so anyone viewing Ronaldo’s signing with cynicism is no true lover of football.’
Quite.
Back to October 2022, when Kidd tells us that ‘nostalgia ain’t what it used to be’, while Ronaldo is both ‘an overgrown toddler chucking his Ballon d’Ors [sic] out of the pram’ and ‘an ageing diva raging against the dying of the limelight’.
Yet little over a year ago, ‘Manchester United’s returning A-lister shows no sign of winding down’, ‘the old GOAT possesses greater stamina than any fellow contender for the title of the world’s greatest ever footballer’ and it would have been ‘churlish to talk of a player being past his best when he scored 36 goals last season’.
But it’s absolutely fine when they subsequently score 24 goals in a season when no other Man Utd player gets more than 10.
‘Ronaldo’s return was a flawed idea,’ Kidd kindly informs us now. If only he could have let us know when writing in the days after the Portuguese joined that ‘of course, United had to this deal’. Because it sounds like it wasn’t always about nostalgia for some.
Title card
‘If Solskjaer and the United hierarchy believed that adding Ronaldo’s goal threat to a team which had finished as runners-up in the 2020-21 season would instantly turn them into title contenders, then they weren’t watching what happened at the Portuguese’s previous club, Juventus’ – Dave Kidd, The Sun, October 21, 2022.
‘Heading into the white heat of a four-horse Premier League title race, Ronaldo’s ambition remains undimmed’ – Dave Kidd, The Sun, August 30, 2021.
Crist the redeemer
Then we get to the real issue: how Ronaldo knackered our beautiful…
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