The Character Assassination Of Cristiano Ronaldo

So… listen to this… Ronaldo is finished… or at least that’s what they have been saying for years… Even back in late 2017, 7 years ago… I hear it damn near every day… We were heading towards the 20th matchday and he was still stuck with only 4 league goals… and strangely the fans seemed to be praying for his downfall… Once he came back with 21 goals in 12 matches, completely demolishing all the claims… they were almost disappointed… It reminded me of something someone once said… “The one thing they love more than a hero, is to see a hero fail, fall, die trying…. In spite of everything you’ve done for them, eventually, they will hate you…” Ronaldo has been a victim of this phenomenon, over and over again… And 99% of the time, if you were just a bit smart about it and managed to keep a cool head… You could see that it wasn’t the end… I mean, I never doubted him… Well, except once… Precisely one year ago today, for the first time in my life, I looked at my phone and thought… Yeah this is it… it’s over… I almost feel bad saying that… but honestly I feel like a lot of us have forgotten already how bad things got… it’s no wonder I thought there was no coming back… This time around, it wasn’t like they were just enjoying his downfall… they were actively trying to tear him down… to kill him off… it was a public character assassination… It made no sense… except… it sort of did… Because remember… Ronaldo was never supposed to have come back to United… it was only after Sir Alex came in to stop his move to City that the doors opened up for him… After all, the owners of United, the Glazer family, are known for being greedy cheapskates with no love for the sport who milk the club as much as they can and force players with big wages away, so why would they show any interest in bringing over the most expensive player on the planet… In fact, at the time there were even rumors that Jorge Mendes, Ronaldo’s agent, had only approached City as a way to pressure United into making a move… So yeah, I think you see where I’m going… Regardless, to begin with, things were incredible… Even at 36 years of age, Ronaldo showed all the kids in the Premier League how it was done with 17 goal contributions in his first 18 starts for United… and in the Champions League group stage he was just out of this world… I mean I think this is worthy of a little recap… So… first game in, they play young boys, Ronaldo opens the score, gets subbed off and they waste their lead… Second game vs Villareal, he scores a 95 minute winner… In the third game vs Atalanta, he scores with 9 minutes left to close off a 3 goal comeback and just two weeks later in their second match against them, they go behind early, he scores in the final minute of the first half to tie the match, they go behind again and he scores another last minute goal to tie the match… again… And finally, needing a win to finish top of their group and facing Villareal, the reigning Europa League champions, who just the previous year had beaten them in the final to take the trophy… Ronaldo again opens the scoring with 12 minutes left on the clock and is subbed off with 1 minute to go, receiving a standing ovation… At that moment, the vibes seemed immaculate… but in reality, there was already a problem… by the time that second match vs Villareal came around, United had already sacked their manager Ole Gunnar Soljskaer and placed Carrick as the interim… and well, even though Ronaldo had just secured their only qualification to the UCL knockout stages in a span of 5 years. Right on his first league match in charge, Carrick benched him and ended up settling for only a draw… But even as his permanent replacement Ralf Rangnick watched from the stands as in the very next game, Ronaldo scored a brace to earned them a comeback win vs Arsenal… Well… I’m guessing he too couldn’t learn from the mistakes of others… As once he took over the squad, on only his second game in charge, he benched Ronaldo against Young Boys… once again settling for a measly draw and nearly ruinning all the hard work Ronaldo had put in to secure their place at the top of the group… Over the next month, rumors of a fractured relationship between the two would come up over and over again and as much as both Ronaldo and Rangnick would repeatedly insist they maintained a cordial relationship, once he subbed him off vs Brentford, it couldn’t be more evident looking at Ronaldo’s body language that something was wrong and the fact that he would only score one goal over the next 10 matches would confirm it… However, right after the last of those matches, he was left out of the squad against Man City supposedly thanks to an injury… but instead of sitting on the stands supporting his team… He got on a plane and flew back to Portugal… As Roy Keane would say: “There seems to be something more to this Ronaldo situation… The manager insists on that hip flexor story but come on, that man is a machine!

This story just doesn’t add up. ” You see, once Ronaldo was back from that trip, he seemed oddly rejuvenated… Like a weight had been taken off his shoulders… I mean, on his very first match back, he scored a hat trick in a 3 to 2 win vs Tottenham, which many considered his best performance of the season and just 3 matches later he was scoring another hat trick… It seemed like things would finally take a turn for the better, but then… Well, his wife went into labor, there were some complications and…. one of his twins passed away at childbirth and the other was left struggling in the hospital… This was obviously a devastating situation, his other kids kept asking about the other baby… they had two cribs, two sets of everything waiting for them back home… His wife admitted that for a while she struggled to even leave the house… But as per usual, Ronaldo shocked the world with his relentless dedication… showing up to their match against Arsenal only 5 days after the death of his son and scoring United’s only goal, dedicating to his son and preceding to score in both of the next two matches… Even in the toughest month of his life, he was the Premier League Player Of The Month… Everyone was touched by this moment, even Liverpool fans applauded him….

In a season where the fans turned on De Gea, where Rashford put up the worst performances of his career, where Greenwood ended up in jail, where Sancho became the biggest flop the league had seen in ages and Pogba pulled his final vanishing act… Ronaldo was named the Man United player of the season, earned a place in the league’s team of the season, finishing 3rd in the golden boot race and topped the league for match winners, points won, hat tricks and player of the month awards… And thankfully, with new coach Erik Ten Hag arriving, there was hope things would change for the better… Suddenly, there was a sense of hope floating in the air… but unfortunately it didn’t last long… By mid July, the fans had grown increasingly frustrated with the fact the club had failed to secure any new signings and so had Ronaldo who informed them of his desire to leave… and from this moment on… it all got too much… he just… lost his head… The media leveraged one story into a whirlwind of transfer rumors, it was Bayern, then Inter, then PSG, then Chelsea… you name it… Most of the time it took like two seconds of active critical thinking to realize that these stories made no sense, but again with every one hoping for his demise, who cared? Things only got worse and worse and once he missed pre-season, it all exploded… Every news outlet seemed determined to convince the world that he was doing it to force his way out of the club when in reality, it was his baby daughter who once again was in the hospital… And Ten Hag, a manager who initially seemed to love Ronaldo, a manager who repeatedly claimed that he’d love to have him in his squad, even when he asked to leave… Well… for some reason, he doubted him, he assumed he was lying… According to Ronaldo, the whole club did, they turned their backs on him when he needed understanding, they fired up the rumors when he needed peace and to make it all worse, Ronaldo’s threats to expose all that had happened in an interview led to a disagreement between him and his agent, that saw their decade long relationship come to and end, making his quest to find a new club even harder… and leaving Ronaldo stuck at United… where Ten Hag… desperate to assert his dominance, ended up just humiliating him… benching him repeatedly, at times subbing him on with only a handful of minutes left in the game and eventually taking it all up a notch in a match vs Tottenham… repeatedly ordering him to warm up, but never actually subbing him on, and then trying to force him to come in, with only 2 minutes left on the clock… leading Ronaldo to lash out and head towards the tunnel before the match had even ended, being force to train by himself as punishment… In all fairness, it’s impressive how, even in the middle of all this mess, he still had the second most goal contributions in the team, bellow only Marcus Rashford, but regardless when one month later Ten Hag began justifying every single one of his absences with this mysterious illness he refused to elaborate on… it became clear that things were about to burst and suddenly, the interview was announced… By now, I don’t think there’s much of a point going in depth about the things Ronaldo said, I mean this interview was easily the most talked about topic in the world for weeks… but regardless, he pretty much just claimed that he felt he had been betrayed, that right from his arrival, a lot of people did not want him there… that Ten Had didn’t respect him and that indeed the club didn’t believe him when he told them his daughter was sick… but above all, he claimed that the club’s infrastructures were a decade behind what he had at Juventus or Real, that there had been no investments whatsoever, attacking the Glazers once more, saying that “The owners don’t care about Man United” and referring to it as “a marketing club”. .

. claiming that they had no chance of closing the gap between them and the other teams in the top 6 and finally adding that if the only way for the club to progress was for him to sacrifice himself, then he would have no problem in being the first one to leave… which became oddly prophetic when, on the very same day that it was announce that his contract had been terminated by mutual agreement, it was also announce that after years and years of protests from the fans, the Glazer family had finally agreed to put the club up for sale… However, I think it’s fair to say that in a lot of ways, this interview backfired, as always the media machine worked extra hours trying to make Ronaldo look as bad as possible… And with the world cup starting just 2 days after the termination of his contract, it all got out of hand… At one point, a clip came out of Bruno supposedly ignoring Ronaldo in the locker room and it all got blown up into oblivion, with the media hounding Bruno until he gave them a statement… and guess what?