Cristiano Ronaldo: The Ultimate Scapegoat
Cristiano Ronaldo returned to the Premier League, aged 36, with a vengeance. He capped off an 18-goal league campaign with 6 more coming in the Champions League, earning Manchester United's Player of the Season Award. However, Ronaldo had quickly become a lonely bright light in a very dark year for United fans. The turbulent exit of Ole Gunnar Solsjkaer, the shaky and divisive reign of interim manager Ralf Rangnick that followed, and a 58-point season (the worst in the Premier League history of the club) left Manchester United looking onto a summer of defining change.
Considering the success of Solsjkaer in the years leading up to Ronaldo's return, the aging superstar became the target of a lot of the blame in the club's tumultuous campaign. It was nothing new for Ronaldo to take some heat from media and fans alike - being the face of world football alongside Lionel Messi for the better part of two decades is assured to come with boundless amounts of both admiration and criticism - but the reaction to the 2021/22 season was rather staggering considering the contributions from United's number 7 had rescued them from a far more embarrassing outcome.
Cristiano's goals rescued 14 league points for Manchester United - they would have finished an astounding 14th place without his tally. He single-handedly carried the club through the group stages of the Champions League, scoring in all 5 appearances he made for a total of 6 goals. His 6 goals in the competition are only matched when combining the rest of the team as a whole.
Following his club-most 24 goals in all competitions was just 10 from fellow Portuguese Bruno Fernandes. Third on the same list was Mason Greenwood (6), whose last game for the club came in January of 2022. This speaks volumes about the help Ronaldo was receiving in the goal-scoring department; it was essentially non-existent. He scored over a third of the club's goals on his own. In his 20th season as a professional.
One should also note that the playstyle of both Solsjkaer and Rangnick wouldn't allow for a multitude of chances for any striker. Both played a back-four with a pair of center-defensive midfielders, committing seven of the eleven players on the pitch to defensive duties. The second-place finish in the empty stadiums of the 2020/21 campaign disillusioned many fans into a belief that United were close to being back to where they once were, but for any fan under the impression that Ole Gunnar Solsjkaer had the club headed back in the right direction, it would take only a quick glance back at the constant chance creation, front-footed nature, and sheer dominance of Sir Alex Ferguson's United sides as a refresher of how far from that glory the club has fallen. Ole's counter-attacking style was only ever going to be sustainable for so long once opposing managers began to see it coming, and the return of fans to the grounds added great deals of pressure that made it harder to play visually frustrating football.
So unfortunately for Cristiano, his return to Old Trafford happened to coincide with the last of Solsjkaer's success at no fault of his own. Ole would have been gone much sooner, some would say, had Ronaldo not rescued results against the likes of Atalanta, Villareal, and Spurs. And while many had high hopes upon the arrival of interim manager Ralf Rangnick, the United board's refusal to back him financially in the January transfer window surrendered any chance he had of putting his own fingerprints on United's way of play in such a short period of time.
While this left Ronaldo all but helpless in certain matches, he still managed to finish third among the Premier League's top goalscorers, and ahead of the renowned goal machine Harry Kane despite competing in seven fewer matches. The notion that any of Manchester United's recent failures as a club should be attributed to Cristiano is evidently nothing short of an uneducated lie. So why has it become such a common viewpoint?
This is a question that I have pondered continuously since the release of Cristiano's interview with Piers Morgan (which deserves its own examination) that led to the termination of his contract and his migration east to the Saudi Pro League.
Of course, the accelerated and ridiculously impressive track record of Dutch manager Erik ten Hag since his arrival in the summer of 2022 - with Ronaldo bench-ridden for almost all of their short time spent together - has allowed for agenda-driven, narrow-minded football fans to pin the downfalls of the previous season onto Cristiano. Debunking this feels ridiculously simple; correlation doesn't mean causation at the best of times, never mind here. All one is doing by pinning the failure on Ronaldo is undermining the staggering job that ten Hag has done. As previously discussed, Ronaldo was the only bright spot in that 2021/22 season, rescuing the club from sheer embarrassment. Does one need a university degree to understand that that same player likely wasn't the one responsible for losing matches?
Rather than identifying Cristiano's removal as the key factor for the change in fortunes, perhaps consider the introduction of a manager fresh off of a marvelously successful tenure at Ajax, implementing his own play style and galvanizing a broken dressing room into an inspired unit. Singing his praises is the right way to analyze United's turnaround, but even if one did want to look at a personnel change, surely removing Harry Maguire from the heart of the defense for the insertion of Argentinian killer Lisandro Martinez would be the most accurate examination.
Manchester United scored 56 Premier League goals in ten Hag's first season. In the year before - with Ronaldo at the forefront - they scored 55. However, in Ronaldo's big year, they also conceded a concerning 57 goals. But under ten Hag, they conceded just 43! A fourteen-goal difference in the defense and a mirrored attack across the two seasons, and one is meant to believe that the change in the striker position was the catalyst for improvement. Frankly, it makes no sense. But lazy journalism and the headline-driven state of mainstream media allowed for unwavering blasphemy thrown in the direction of Cristiano Ronaldo.
Furthermore, the narrative continually grew that Ronaldo's attitude was the main issue in the changing room.
While I can't speak for the fanbase, I can speak for myself as a Manchester United fan that I'll take the attitude of the man with five Balon d'Ors, five Champions Leagues, 35 total trophies, and over 800 goals to his name over the attitude of the squad whose combined career accomplishments don't even come remotely close, every day of the week. And for the fans who wouldn't, perhaps consider that you're contributing to the type of the more widespread "attitude" that has sent this historic football club spiraling down a continual hill over the last decade.
Cristiano was far from the first of a number of football icons with reputable "attitudes" who have been shown the door at Manchester United in the last few years. To name a few are Jose Mourhino, briefly successful before his winning ways were found too competent for the board to keep up with or back financially, and Zlatan Ibrahimovic, another success story while here but who has been outspoken about the small mentality at the club since his departure.
Yes, even I can admit there was a dip in Cristiano's outward demeanor in the waning months of his time in Manchester, but once again the main factor has been entirely overlooked. When Ronaldo put in a transfer request in the summer of 2022, first conversations had already taken place between himself and the new boss - conversations which now evidently contained the fact that Erik did not have Cristiano as a part of his long term plans. But with Ronaldo still believing in his own ability to be the main man, the obvious option was to ask out. Ten Hag had said his piece, Ronaldo acted accordingly, but Manchester United drove the wedge in by refusing to let a 37 year old Cristiano move on with his career. Ten Hag was right to forewarn Ronaldo before the transfer window shut, and Ronaldo was right to ask to be moved on in a respectful manner. But here come the Glazers to put another foot right in their fantastic time as owners of this club, putting said foot down and refusing to even let him breathe the shop window.
To this day I dream of the right ending. What a fairy tale it would have been to have his single return season be such an overwhelming success and then send him off with all the well wishes one could think of. But no, into the season we went with a player forced into his place by a club well aware that "CR7" is the biggest individual brand the football world (and in fact one of the biggest the entire world) has to offer, and with every intention to use that to their commercial advantage for as long as possible. Fast forward just a little, and Cristiano is sat in a living room before the World Cup explaining to a happy-to-be-there Piers Morgan the ways in which he felt betrayed by Manchester United. An unnecesarry sour taste left in everyone's mouth.
Despite the mainstream agendas, the spiteful rival fans who were truly just internally delighted to see the end of years of "SIUUUUUUUs" terrorizing their teams, and despite even the never-ending attacks from people who just don't seem to appreciate greatness in the way that they should, Cristiano Ronaldo stands tall. His legacy will stand the test of time.
Though you may be feeling this way at the moment, I am not here to tell you that Cristiano Ronaldo is a perfect person who can do no wrong. I believe Jesus Christ to be the only man who has ever walked the earth in such a way. But what I can tell you is that Cristiano Ronaldo, a personal hero of mine and a man whose reach and impact transcends football, encapsulated the Theatre of Dreams on countless occasions like I've never seen before - at age 18 and 37 alike.
The end to Ronaldo's tenure at Manchester United teaches an important lesson; consider facts for yourself and draw the conclusions you feel best fit, and don't allow yourself to be spoonfed by mainstream media or blinded by personal agendas.
While this somewhat contradicts my specific goal of defending him in this article, he tells you himself:
"We cannot live being obsessed with what other people think about us. It's impossible to live like that."
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