There is obviously a great deal of entertainment value in this hyper-nonsense, It’s A Knockout version of Manchester United.
If nothing else, they make skipping a match easy. You check the full-time score and pattern of goals against Atalanta on Tuesday evening and you know how it went down to the letter. Sloppy defending? Check. Overrun in midfield? Check. Dug out of a huge whole by individual brilliance? Check, twice. Ultimately ending the night where they started it? Of course.
But for all the flip-flopping between crisis and response, of a team who endure and enjoy lurches within the same half let alone the same season just as they did for most of last season, United have changed. For a while, the theory was that Ole Gunnar Solskjaer excelled in the biggest fixtures and struggled against weaker sides; that was what made his reign so unfathomable. But in their last four games against two excellent coaches, Jurgen Klopp and Brendan Rodgers, United have conceded 15 goals.
Perhaps that shift is simply the impact of Cristiano Ronaldo’s arrival. When Juventus won the league in 2019-20, they lost to Lazio, Roma, Milan and Napoli but beat every team from ninth downwards at home. Last season, they took 10 points from eight games against the top five and only lost twice to the rest. Ronaldo was named Footballer of the Year in both years. Whether you think that was reward enough, individual acclaim in a team sport, probably depends on your opinion of Ronaldo.
The great irony of Manchester United signing Ronaldo is that, at Juventus, his move ultimately failed because of a lack of investment in midfielders and undue faith in a club-legend manager who lacked high-level coaching experience. Take his individual numbers and you have a superstar. Take the club’s eventual decline during his spell and you have a dilemma.
For all Ronaldo’s consummate brilliance, he has become more of a big-moments player than a big-game guarantee (that is less a criticism and more an observation). He scored 60 goals in 66 Serie A matches but only seven in 17 against Inter, Milan and Napoli. The same is roughly true against England’s best: nine goals in 42 career matches against Manchester City, Chelsea and Liverpool. It is as if he is the author of his own script, waiting until the crunch moments, when his team peeks over the cliff edge, before pulling them back.
Alex Ferguson’s great missive that nobody was bigger than the club was firmly reinforced throughout his dynastical reign, but it is being tested now. On the pitch, Ronaldo has scored the opener against Tottenham, the equaliser against West Ham and Atalanta and two late winners in the Champions League. Off the pitch too, the question stands. Ronaldo has seven times as many Instagram followers and three times as many Twitter followers as the self-styled biggest club in the world.
Ronaldo has been presented as both a cause of Manchester United’s problems and the solution. He does press less than anyone else, which becomes an issue when others try to take on his work and create a piecemeal pressing system. And his individual brilliance does offset that lack of work for the system; he scores the goals that paper the cracks. But United have two fewer points in the Premier League and Champions League than at the same stage last season. Their centre-forward is both the firestarter and firefighter.
That assessment of Ronaldo isn’t wrong, but it is also entirely self-evident. He is a magnet for the ball, for the analysis and over-analysis, the subject of all the big opinions. The strength of his personality/ego (delete as appropriate) demands as much. Ronaldo has instantly become Manchester United’s sun, moon and all of their stars, their working week and Sunday rest, just by returning to Old Trafford. We can only view Manchester United now through Ronaldo. He is a mirror of their soul, an expensive marquee signing to mask systemic issues.
Ronaldo wears that individualism as a badge of honour; he leads clubs because he delights in leading. “It’s all about trying to be the best; I will keep working hard to achieve it,” he said in 2009 and he did exactly that. He has described being hated by opposition supporters as motivation and admitted that he was far from humble. It paints his perceived arrogance not as an affectation, but an engine. Ronaldo sees his entire career as a simple battle: me vs the world.
That clamour for individual brilliance always fitted in snugly with the ambitions of his clubs. Between 2005 and 2020 Ronaldo’s clubs only twice finished outside the top two and only twice did he not end the season as their top scorer. But last season at Juventus and so far this season at Manchester United, he is learning that individual majesty cannot fully suppress the flaws in a system that have been allowed to grow like weeds. He is continuing at the same relentless rate; his clubs are not.
You don’t have to be a soothsayer to predict how this continues; the pattern is already cemented. Ronaldo will score goals because he is imperious. He will rescue Manchester United repeatedly because he is their most reliable goalscorer. But can he ever truly escape the inescapable truth that United would be far better off if they did not need him to?
from Football – inews.co.uk https://ift.tt/3nYnWox
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