Cristiano Ronaldo is bigger than Erik ten Hag, that’s why the Man Utd boss needs to get rid

No player was ever bigger than Alex Ferguson, Alex Ferguson used to say. It was something the fiery former Manchester United manager couldn’t stand and a facet of management he considered fundamental to his role.

It was the reason he got rid of David Beckham, who at the time was the most marketable footballer on the planet and one of the game’s leading midfielders, with a delivery unrivalled by none and a winning tenacity few could better.

Ferguson observed Beckham’s obsession with celebrity and carefully curated rise to global stardom with curious bemusement, but when the player started to believe that he didn’t have to answer to his manager, Ferguson knew it was time for Beckham to go.

Ferguson infamously kicked the boot that left a deep cut above Beckham’s eye after they had been knocked out of the FA Cup by Arsenal in 2003 and called him in for a meeting at his office in Carrington to discuss why the manager had lost his temper. Ferguson thought Beckham had not tracked back to prevent Sylvain Wiltord scoring Arsenal’s second goal and showed Beckham the video of him jogging before Wiltord scored. But the midfielder refused to engage.

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“Do you understand what we’re talking about, why we got on to you?” Ferguson said, pressing him on it. Beckham ignored him, and the next day the story had made its way into the press accompanied by pictures of Beckham wearing an Alice band to highlight the wound, which required stitches.

“It was in those days that I told the board David had to go,” Ferguson later wrote in his autobiography. “My message would have been familiar to board members who knew me. The minute a Manchester United player thought he was bigger than the manager, he had to go.

“I used to say, ‘The moment the manager loses his authority, you don’t have a club. The players will be running it, and then you’re in trouble.’ David thought he was bigger than Alex Ferguson. There is no doubt about that in my mind. It doesn’t matter whether it’s Alex Ferguson or Pete the Plumber. The name of the manager is irrelevant.

“The authority is what counts. You cannot have a player taking over the dressing room. Many tried. The focus of authority at Manchester United is the manager’s office. That was the death knell for him.”

It’s staggering how much the Manchester United that Ferguson wrestled to avoid resembles the Manchester United of today. Times have changed since Ferguson was managing Beckham in the 1990s and early 2000s. Player power has increased. Managers are now often merely a coach fitting into a predetermined structure. Even Ferguson concedes in the book that only Arsene Wenger and Jose Mourinho are likely to command the same power and sway as himself.

Ferguson never stood for player power (Photo: Getty)

Even so, trying to keep Cristiano Ronaldo has clearly been the first major mistake of Erik ten Hag’s six weeks in charge of Manchester United. Not only did Ronaldo not fit his style of play, his goal-scoring exploits last season – third top-scorer in the Premier League with 18 – painted an inaccurate picture of his influence on the team.

Manchester United actually scored 16 fewer total goals than the season before. Their possession statistics fell – from 55.6 per cent to 52.1 per cent – and they had a fractionally smaller share of shots than their opponents in matches.

And perhaps the most telling statistic of all, for a manager who expects his team to press from front to back: Ronaldo put opposition players under pressure less than any other player in Europe’s top five leagues, apart from goalkeepers and centre-backs, last season.

Ten Hag was supposed to arrive at Manchester United and reunite a fractured dressing room with steely discipline. No player should have been bigger than the Dutchman. The moment Ronaldo’s representatives said he wanted to leave, Ten Hag should have been waving him out the door.

Why has he publicly insisted on Ronaldo being part of his plans? Was it ego, on Ten Hag’s part? Did he not want to be the manager who gave up the opportunity to try to tame the world’s most dominating footballer?

I thought the whole point of bringing in no-nonsense Ten Hag was that he was going to turn Manchester United into the institution it was in the Ferguson era, when team was paramount to everything, and no one was bigger than the boss.

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Meanwhile, Ronaldo has overshadowed everything. He was the story when he left Old Trafford early after being substituted at half-time in the friendly against Rayo Vallecano. He was the story when he was left on the bench in the defeat to Brighton on Sunday. And when Ronaldo was brought on, in the 53rd minute, he wasn’t even ready. He was sat putting in his shin pads and getting his boots on, as though saying to Ten Hag: you’ve made me wait, now you can wait for me.

Being bigger than the players ran through everything Ferguson did. Even when Wayne Rooney agreed a £200,000 per week contract in 2010 (a big deal at the time). “When the Glazers and David Gill agreed to a big increase in Wayne Rooney’s salary, they wanted to know how I felt,” Ferguson wrote in Leading, a book about lessons in leadership.

“I told them I did not think it fair that Rooney should earn twice what I made and Joel Glazer immediately said, ‘I totally agree with you but what should we do?’ It was simple. We just agreed that no player should be paid more than me. We agreed in less time than it takes to read the previous sentence.”

It should have taken roughly as long for Ten Hag to tell the Glazers to let Ronaldo leave so he had some semblance of a chance of sorting out the mess Manchester United have become since Ferguson retired.

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