Cristiano Ronaldo (I stay)

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The Duncan Castles report says he blames us for ruining his reputation.
 
Mental gymnastics and Ronaldo fanbois go hand in hand.
 
The Firestarter said:
Keep going the same way, your future here is bright.
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It’s been fine here until I met your roommate. I usually talk football and don’t resort to childish name calling of United legends. That’s was of course, until I met you.
 
The Corinthian said:
One spearheads the attack for a team that regularly reaches the semi finals of the CL, and the other literally has some ownership of the other club whilst being one of the most exciting talents in world football and both are in the early early 20s. There's every chance they break Ronaldo's record.
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True, but the odds of maintaining the pace they are on now is slim to none.
 
Its been mentioned plenty of times on here before, if he is THAT desperate for CL football, then he should take a token salary or bend over backwards to financially facilitate a move. Cant have your cake and eat it.
 
Raoul said:
True, but the odds of maintaining the pace they are on now is slim to none.
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They play for the 2 richest clubs in the world, 2 of the best teams. There's every chance their teams will start making deep runs every season
 
The Corinthian said:
Based on what?
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Based on the fact that only Messi and Ronaldo have been able to generate high amounts of goals over a protracted period of time. They are once in a lifetime players. The others are top players of their respective generations and will likely never get to anywhere near goat status.

For comparison, Ruud had two very good early years in the CL where he scored 24 goals. And yet he only finished on 62 despite spending most of his career at Man United and Real Madrid. That is probably closer to where Haaland and Mbappe will wind up because virtually every player spare Ronaldo and Messi have demonstrated they are unable to produce goals for a decade or more, which is what it would take to catch Ronaldo.
 
United should in no way pay any wages for a loan. Give him the option of terminating the contract and he can earn whatever Napoli, Sporting are willing to pay him, whether that be 50k a week or 150k, it's his choice, he wants to leave for CL goals. There's nothing to gain paying his wages, he's no good a year later for us.

Also don't believe this talk of winning a title together. Ronaldo himself was very realistic in his interviews when arriving about what United could do and how far we were from a CL or PL title. He got his CL goals with us and it's time to move on and he has to take a big wage cut to continue playing CL football.
 
Raoul said:
Based on the fact that only Messi and Ronaldo have been able to generate high amounts of goals over a protracted period of time. They are once in a lifetime players. The others are top players of their respective generations and will likely never get to anywhere near goat status.

For comparison, Ruud had two very good early years in the CL where he scored 24 goals. And yet he only finished on 62 despite spending most of his career at Man United and Real Madrid. That is probably closer to where Haaland and Mbappe will wind up because virtually every player spare Ronaldo and Messi have demonstrated they are unable to produce goals for a decade or more, which is what it would take to catch Ronaldo.
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Ronaldo played for 9 years for a team that sought to maximise his output. In a similar vein, both Haaland and Mbappe will have that role at their respective clubs for at least the next 5-7 years. There’s every chance that both these players could be 27/28 years old and have 80+ CL goals. If they get to that position, and they remain injury free, I can see them ending up with 150ish. Haaland especially can adapt his game and end up somewhere like Bayern and have a similar output to Lewadowski.
 
giorno said:
They play for the 2 richest clubs in the world, 2 of the best teams. There's every chance their teams will start making deep runs every season
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See the Ruud example. Henry also played most of his career for Juventus, peak Arsenal, and Barcelona and only finished on 59. Players do get injured and lose form over time, which is what has separated Messi and Ronaldo from the others. They both somehow miraculously managed to avoid injury while knocking in an unprecedented amount of goals over a protracted period of time.
 
He looked every bit of an old bloke yesterday. Everything he does with and without the ball was so stiff and surely he himself has to know that?
 
Raoul said:
Based on the fact that only Messi and Ronaldo have been able to generate high amounts of goals over a protracted period of time. They are once in a lifetime players. The others are top players of their respective generations and will likely never get to anywhere near goat status.

For comparison, Ruud had two very good early years in the CL where he scored 24 goals. And yet he only finished on 62 despite spending most of his career at Man United and Real Madrid. That is probably closer to where Haaland and Mbappe will wind up because virtually every player spare Ronaldo and Messi have demonstrated they are unable to produce goals for a decade or more, which is what it would take to catch Ronaldo.
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Your problem is you put far too much stock in stats. Ronaldo gets amazing stats but he generally makes his teams worse and needs his team mates to sacrifice their entire game to do it. Then there is the fact that loads of his goals come against minnows, or are meaningless stat padding anyway (same with Messi but difference is Messi can actually dictate a game and isn't just a goalscorer). He's scored tons of goals for Juve and United, but did those teams get better? Did it help them or his goal stat reputation? Even at Real Madrid, his tons of goals in the league only led to 2 Liga titles in 9 seasons (dominated by Barca) and if it wasn't for the very flukey three CLs in a row his time there would have been seen as a failure probably, with two leagues and 1 CL to show for 9 seasons. Real Madrid have proved since he left that they can win things without him (admittedly it's not against prime Barca but still) Who is to say a more balanced team not deisgned to feed Ronaldo with 10 chances a game wouldn't have had a better chance against Pep's Barca? Pep generally dominated Ronaldo's teams for two years until Pep took his eye off the ball in 2011-2012.

As Zehner constantly says, this obsession with goal stats is fecking ridiculous. The natrual conclusion from your comments is that Ronaldo is about 15 times the player Iniesta was based on goal proportions, and that the likes of Gerrard, lampard were better than Xavi and Zidane. In fact, feck it, might as well say mario Gomez or Luca Toni were all time greats for scoring loads of goals.

Can you not see how fecking ridiculous and moronic tactically it is to just count up goal stats to the detriment of everything else? Ronaldo scores tons of goals but is he a better technical footballer than Xavi and Iniesta? Did he contribute more to the team outside of goalscoring than they did? Does he feck. There are many ways to play and many ways to win a game, a hell of a lot of work goes into getting Ronaldo his goals, and most of the time the hardest work is done by his team mates, not him. But he's the one who gets the statistical credit so superficial fans can't see past that. I bet if you looked through all of Messi and Ronaldo's hundreds of goals, Messi's goals would be of much better quality and a higher degree of difficulty, in general. Ronaldo scores so many basic, scrappy goals it is unreal.

This Americansation stats obsession in modern football is fecking ridiculous. Have you never heard of qualitative data ie the eye test? It's what proper football fans used to do before everyone was obsessed with misleading stats. In fact, what is the point of even watching football? Might as well count up goal stats on wikpieda. Why? even have goalkeeepers, defenders and midfielders? Just play a three on three forward game and see who scores most goals.

fecking sick to the back teeth of idiots (not saying you are in idiot, but in general) who can't tactically analyse a game so fall back to goal stats. Zehner is spot on, there is so much more to football than the final two contacts before a goal. I am just so sick of inbreds saying shite like 'how can you say he played poorly, he scored'? Like a tap in or finish one minute out of 90 excuses the other 89 minutes of fecking shite general play. I am talking generally here, not just about Ronaldo, but certainly Ronaldo and Bruno Fernandes are the biggest examples of stats and highlights players I can think of.

Like I said in my lengthy posts a few pages back where I talked about Ronaldo's personality and celebrity idol culture in general - Ronaldo fanboys are the absolute worst. They're a weird creepy insane cult who twist everything to make him seem like some sort of God. See shite like 'The CR7 Timeline' (cringe). Why do people wank over some dickhead celebrity whose only redeeming feature in life is being able to put a ball in a net a lot? He's an absolute cnut of a guy and should be reviled the world over, not be popular. Blows my mind. He wouldn't piss on any of you if you were on fire ffs, stop rimming him.
 
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Zidane1982 said:
Your problem is you put far too much stock in stats. Ronaldo gets amazing stats but he generally makes his teams worse and needs his team mates to sacrifice their entire game to do it. Then there is the fact that loads of his goals come against minnows, or are meaningless stat padding anyway (same with Messi but difference is Messi can actually dictate a game and isn't just a goalscorer). He's scored tons of goals for Juve and United, but did those teams get better? Did it help them or his goal stat reputation? Even at Real Madrid, his tons of goals in the league only led to 2 Liga titles in 9 seasons (dominated by Barca) and if it wasn't for the very flukey three CLs in a row his time there would have been seen as a failure probably, with two leagues and 1 CL to show for 9 seasons. Real Madrid have proved since he left that they can win things without him (admittedly it's not against prime Barca but still) Who is to say a more balanced team not deisgned to feed Ronaldo with 10 chances a game wouldn't have had a better chance against Pep's Barca? Pep generally dominated Ronaldo's teams for two years until Pep took his eye off the ball in 2011-2012.

As Zehner constantly says, this obsession with goal stats is fecking ridiculous. The natrual conclusion from your comments is that Ronaldo is about 15 times the player Iniesta was based on goal proportions, and that the likes of Gerrard, lampard were better than Xavi and Zidane. In fact, feck it, might as well say mario Gomez or Luca Toni were all time greats for scoring loads of goals.

Can you not see how fecking ridiculous and moronic tactically it is to just count up goal stats to the detriment of everything else? Ronaldo scores tons of goals but is he a better technical footballer than Xavi and Iniesta? Did he contribute more to the team outside of goalscoring than they did? Does he feck.

This Americansation stats obsession in modern football is fecking ridiculous. In fact, what is the point of even having goalkeeepers, defenders and midfielders? Just play a three on three forward game and see who scores most goals.

fecking sick to the back teeth of idiots (not saying you are in idiot, but in general) who can't tactically analyse a game so fall back to goal stats. Zehner is spot on, there is so much more to football than the final two contacts before a goal. I am just so sick of inbreds saying shite like 'how can you say he played poorly, he scored'? Like a tap in or finish one minute out of 90 excuses the other 89 minutes of fecking shite general play. I am talking generally here, not just about Ronaldo, but certainly Ronaldo and Bruno Fernandes are the biggest examples of stats and highlights players I can think of.
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There’s no obsession with goals. The only reason they are brought up is because folks tend to brush off the importance of goals (something we’ve sorely lacked in recent years) as a way to move the goal posts in support of their anti-Ronaldo arguments.

As for he makes his teams worse, the hand fun of CLs his teams have won over the years would seem to not line up with this taking point.
 
Raoul said:
There’s no obsession with goals. The only reason they are brought up is because folks tend to brush off the importance of goals (something we’ve sorely lacked in recent years) as a way to move the goal posts in support of their anti-Ronaldo arguments.

As for he makes his teams worse, the hand fun of CLs his teams have won over the years would seem to not line up with this taking point.
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Nobody is saying he was detrimental to the overall team performance during his prime, only that there are some signs of this being the case now that he's a pure poacher with a dodgy touch and a very low work-rate.
 
Raoul said:
There’s no obsession with goals. The only reason they are brought up is because folks tend to brush off the importance of goals (something we’ve sorely lacked in recent years) as a way to move the goal posts in support of their anti-Ronaldo arguments.

As for he makes his teams worse, the hand fun of CLs his teams have won over the years would seem to not line up with this taking point.
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I would argue that Juventus Ronaldo onwards absolutely has made teams worse due to his changing role as he has aged.

He is more of a burden now than he is a blessing and fundamentally doesn’t fit into the style of play we will be demanding this year and next.

He’s still a good goal scorer and good player better than most but it’s pointless having him for what we want to achieve now and in future.
 
It's about time Ronaldo realised he's finished. Has been one of the best players to ever play the game but time waits for no man as they say.

We scored more goals in the PL the two years before he returned and we will this season if he leaves. Not enough is said about this.
 
Raoul said:
There’s no obsession with goals. The only reason they are brought up is because folks tend to brush off the importance of goals (something we’ve sorely lacked in recent years) as a way to move the goal posts in support of their anti-Ronaldo arguments.

As for he makes his teams worse, the hand fun of CLs his teams have won over the years would seem to not line up with this taking point.
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In fact to add to this:

15/16 49 1.29 per game
16/17 54 1.42 per game
17/18 68 1.79 per game
18/19 65 1.71 per game
19/20 66 1.74 per game
20/21 73 1.92 per game
21/22 57 1.5 per game

Thats 7 seasons worth here (can go further back but you said recent years).

Based on your comment how would you describe the trend of goals from 15/16 to 20/21 season?

What then happened in 21/22 season? I’m not solely blaming Ronaldo but I also won’t ignore that his very presence takes away from a teams overall ability to attack as it’s a one man poaching show now.

Ronaldo is absolutely a factor in our teams attack being worse last season.
 
Raoul said:
There’s no obsession with goals. The only reason they are brought up is because folks tend to brush off the importance of goals (something we’ve sorely lacked in recent years) as a way to move the goal posts in support of their anti-Ronaldo arguments.

As for he makes his teams worse, the hand fun of CLs his teams have won over the years would seem to not line up with this taking point.
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I covered that

his team at Real Madrid would have been seen as a failure had it not been for the fluky outlier of the three CLs between 2016 and 2018. And that is a great example of what I am saying, beause during that they got outplayed a lot and some of that is due to being one dimensional in setting up Ronaldo, as well as dodgy refereeing decisions. If it hadn't been for that run they'd have won 2 ligas in 9 seasons and 1 CL in 9 seasons of the two big trophies that Real Madrid care about.

You go on about the CL, but you overlook that they only won 2 ligas in 9 seasons and were dominated by barca who won 6 ergo they were a flukey cup team.

Even at Man United the first time, everyone had to set up their entire game to get the best out of Ronaldo. I just don't rate a guy that highly when he needs the rest of the team to behave like lackeys to get him his inflated goal stats. Messi isn't the same case as he actually is much more of a team player and makes his team-mates better, as did Pele, maradona etc. Ronaldo extracts the juice out of his team-mates, then they get the blame after his teams naturally fail because they have to set up to get him goals (Juventus, Man United this time, Portugal). It is fecking laughable how this utter cnut destabilises his team and his team-mates then everyone else gets the blamed pinned on them and he gets off with it scot-free. It's a thing where everyone is to blame, but he takes all the credit and they take all the blame, even his own PR team is trying to spin it this way with the 'Ronaldo fulfilled his part of the bargain, United did not'/ I see it happening for his time at Juve and I see it happening now at UNited on here. Admittedly while it was a problem in his prime he was more worth it then, but is he feck worth it now when he is completely and utterly past it.

Is it really that impressive averageing a goal a game when you take twice as many shots as anyone else in the league, as he consistently did in Spain? I'd argue he's just a volume law of averages player, the same way Fernandes tries 20 through balls a game, costs a counter attack with 19 but gets the last one right and imbeciles go on about how creative he is. If you keep doing something eventually you will get it right. People who wank over Ronaldo's goal stats totally overlook all the conditions and factors which have allowed it to happen, some of which I have covered in this post.

If you played football you'd know this - people absolutely HATE playing with players who are as selfish, arrogant, deluded and ungrateful on and off the pitch as Ronaldo He has never once acknowledged the massive role his team-mates play in his success. He's so clueless and deluded that he bought the nonsense that he won RM those CLs single handedly, then backed himself to do it at Juve. Well, we know how that turned out. And I predicted it too. Anyone with half a brain could see he was a poacher who would be nowhere near as effective without the Real Madrid chance creation set up behind him.

I would argue he's been fortunate to be in the right place at the right time - that his ability and reputation is amplfied from playing in a much more attacking era with greater disparity between the top clubs and the rest. He is by orders of magnitude a worse footballer (note I said FOOTBALLER, not GOALSCORER) than pele, Maradona, Cruyff, messi et al.

. And you'd have lost the 2009 CL Final no matter what, but this tit taking potshots from 30 yards constantly in the first ten minutes before Eto'o scored certainly didn't help. He is an individual player who only cares about his stats, and it's indulging this attitude that leads to the state United (second time) and Juve were in with him and 2 league titles in 9 seasons for Real Madrid. People go on about his success - his main successes have come when he has been a worse player (post 30). Goes to show that trophies are very misleading in analysing a player. I would also posit that Portugal would do better in tournaments (other than the one they fluked) if they didn't have this prick dominating, intimidating and demading from the others on and off the park and creating a complete attention seeking circus. They were more of a team when he went off injured in the 2016 Final. I maintain they'd have lost that final had he not got injured.

But you keep clinging to those three CLs in a row, where they weren't the best team in Europe in any of those three seasons, truth be told. They got there through sheer force of will and refereeing decisions, not because it is tactical genius to try to set up Ronaldo with 10 chances a game. But like I say,. keep clinging to it...

Overall, this guy has a serious personality issue (or issues) and he needs taking down a peg or 8. His atitude is out of control and making football a mockery and people like you simply encourage him and exacerbate the situation by defending him. it is celebrity worship. It is clear to me that you have a major soft spot for the guy, hence your constant irrational defence of him. yes I hate him, but I would argue it is much more normal to hate someone who is a cnut and a stranger than to love them.

I personally can't wait for the cnut to retire so we don't have to put up with his attention seeking and arrogance. Hopefully his fame dwindles and he becomes increasingly irrelevant as we and he age. I don't like Haaland as a player either but he is a goalscoring machine and not quite as unlikeable as Ronaldo, so hopefully he obliterates this greasy cock's goal records because goal records is all most shallow fans seem to put stock in.

Also, if there is 'no obsession with goals' why do you constantly quote his goal stats and use it as evidence that he isn't at fault?

by the way, in response to the guy saying Ronaldo was better technically years ago (I am out of post and can't quote him) I would say this.

I don't think he was, his all-round game has been appalling since at least 2014, and I have seen him make many technical mistakes in games as far back as his prime, much more than you'd see from Messi,. neymar, Lewandowski etc.

Fact is he's a great goalscorer, a power and pace merchant, athletic counter-attack player. That is why Man United love him, cos that was your style under Ferguson. He's mediocre technically though compared to even the best technicians of his generation, never mind of all time. Do you think he'd have been half the player if not for his athetic gifts (same goes for Haaland)?

In fact, I would say Ronaldo himself, is a microcosm of United as a club, and why ferguson loves him. He is counter-attacking, pace, power, speed, but lacking in technicial ability, and ability to press, and poor in tight spaces. This sums up Man United as a team throughout their modern history. Reling on counter attack and individualism, and being unable to play the Pep or Michels or Cruyff way. I have made the point before that Guardiola changed football again and fecked your club, the rot goes back to those two CL Finals they hammered you, because these days you need to have the ability to press, put together passing movements, be great technically and tactically. And as we can see, that has never been Man United's game, you are stuck playing 90s football. Ten Hag is trying to change that but can he change the entire ethos of a club? I highly doubt it. Plus 90 per cent of the idiots in your squad are technically and tactically deficient. You need to whole new squad almost. Ten Hag is not an idiot and he knows most of these players will never suffice.


By the way, I am not a Man United fan, quite the antithesis, which is why I have no problem slating the feck out of this utter cnut. I always hated him anyway, both as a player and as a person.
 
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BenitoSTARR said:
In fact to add to this:

15/16 49 1.29 per game
16/17 54 1.42 per game
17/18 68 1.79 per game
18/19 65 1.71 per game
19/20 66 1.74 per game
20/21 73 1.92 per game
21/22 57 1.5 per game

Thats 7 seasons worth here (can go further back but you said recent years).

Based on your comment how would you describe the trend of goals from 15/16 to 20/21 season?

What then happened in 21/22 season? I’m not solely blaming Ronaldo but I also won’t ignore that his very presence takes away from a teams overall ability to attack as it’s a one man poaching show now.

Ronaldo is absolutely a factor in our teams attack being worse last season.
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As you said, you can’t blame one player for terrible team performances in a year when the entire club were in free fall with two terrible managers, a toxic dressing room and half a squad of unmotivated dead wood. You have to look at the totality of the situation instead of building a hypothesis around just one player.
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Raoul said:
Based on the fact that only Messi and Ronaldo have been able to generate high amounts of goals over a protracted period of time. They are once in a lifetime players. The others are top players of their respective generations and will likely never get to anywhere near goat status.

For comparison, Ruud had two very good early years in the CL where he scored 24 goals. And yet he only finished on 62 despite spending most of his career at Man United and Real Madrid. That is probably closer to where Haaland and Mbappe will wind up because virtually every player spare Ronaldo and Messi have demonstrated they are unable to produce goals for a decade or more, which is what it would take to catch Ronaldo.
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The difference between Cristiano, Messi and someone like Lewandowski is that Real Madrid and Barcelona made deep runs for most of their careers there. Lewandowski has scored 85 CL goals in the last 10 seasons. He has played at least 10 games 6 times. In 3 of those 6 seasons he hit double digits(and 9 in another). For a comparison, Cristiano hit double digit appereances 11 times, scoring in double digits in 7. Messi, 8, 5(once with 9 gp)

As great as those 2 have been, what really set them apart as far as total CL goals are concerned is appereances. Messi has played 156 CL games. Cristiano 183. Lewandowski, 106. Lewandowski actually has a higher goal per game ratio than both and a higher goal per minutes ratio than Cristiano(and nearly identical to Messi). Even if you want to take out the first 3 seasons for both, that still leaves him 40 games behind Messi, 60 behind Cristiano, and 3 thousand minutes short of Messi(and over 5k less than Cris). His goal per game and per minutes ratio is pretty much identical to Cristiano's and only Messi's goal per minutes ratio shows significant difference
 
Jev said:
Nobody is saying he was detrimental to the overall team performance during his prime, only that there are some signs of this being the case now that he's a pure poacher with a dodgy touch and a very low work-rate.
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He was a pure poacher with a dodgy touch and very low work rate when Madrid won 3 CL in a row
 
Raoul said:
Based on the fact that only Messi and Ronaldo have been able to generate high amounts of goals over a protracted period of time. They are once in a lifetime players. The others are top players of their respective generations and will likely never get to anywhere near goat status.

For comparison, Ruud had two very good early years in the CL where he scored 24 goals. And yet he only finished on 62 despite spending most of his career at Man United and Real Madrid. That is probably closer to where Haaland and Mbappe will wind up because virtually every player spare Ronaldo and Messi have demonstrated they are unable to produce goals for a decade or more, which is what it would take to catch Ronaldo.
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I hope you know that football is more than goals.
 
Raoul said:
As you said, you can’t blame one player for terrible team performances in a year when the entire club were in free fall with two terrible managers, a toxic dressing room and half a squad of unmotivated dead wood. You have to look at the totality of the situation instead of building a hypothesis around just one player.
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Of course not but you can identify when a player is having a negative overall impact and I strongly believe Ronaldo has done that.

Solskjaer was not a terrible manager he was good but not good enough to win a league which is fine. He needed replacing at some point. What I don’t buy is the dual narrative that both players and manager were the issue. It can’t be that the manager was terrible and the players because we wouldn’t have finished where we did in the previous season.

Something changed and it was our style of play. We weren’t perfect under Solskjaer and I don’t think we’d ever have won a league with him but we had made steady progress which then all seemed to go.
 
Raoul said:
See the Ruud example. Henry also played most of his career for Juventus, peak Arsenal, and Barcelona and only finished on 59. Players do get injured and lose form over time, which is what has separated Messi and Ronaldo from the others. They both somehow miraculously managed to avoid injury while knocking in an unprecedented amount of goals over a protracted period of time.
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The past 10-15 years have been a decade of dominance and players like Messi, Ronaldo and Lewandowski were fortunate to be the main guys of the three top clubs of that period.

Ronaldo averages 114 minutes per goal in the CL
Van Nistelrooy averages 108 minutes per goal in the CL

Van Nistelrooy didn't suddenly stop scoring, his ratio is pretty good, but aside from the fact that he started and finished his CL career earlier than Ronaldo he also played in significantly weaker teams on average, resulting in way less games. In similar fashion Ronaldo scored less goals in his three Juventus years put together than in his last season for Real.
 
Poborsky's hair said:
What are you talking about? Have you seen ronaldo play post Real Madrid, especially the last two seasons, his finishing is abysmal, he wastes so many chances himself, stops many attacks. Sure there is a decent involvmement here and there but too littel in between and you absolutely expect to have a palyer get a goal involvement as the main man in United team, but he's just past it.

Funnily enough he's not even as useful as Danny Welbeck now. Not worth putting on even for 15 minutes because he refuses to run or simply can't because he's too old, we have seen that today and we have seen that many times before. He basicially just loses the ball while we play with 10 men with and without the ball with him.

Some of his fanboys will keepcoming without even watching any of those games claiming that he's still useful. No he's absolutely finished and sadly there is a really bad situation at United with strikers but he will nto solv that. 18 year old Garnacho isbetter than him and hopefully we will start giving him chances than this guy who just thinks he still has it and is not even willing to break the sweat for the starters..
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I've seen United being a disfunctional team and quite overrated at times by some followers during Ole's stint as manager. For me the team wasn't even better than Villarreal and last season Ronaldo did better than I had anticipated although the team as a whole was still a mess. That being said I do believe the attack needs reinforcements even if Ronaldo stays.
 
Zidane1982 said:
Your problem is you put far too much stock in stats. Ronaldo gets amazing stats but he generally makes his teams worse and needs his team mates to sacrifice their entire game to do it. Then there is the fact that loads of his goals come against minnows, or are meaningless stat padding anyway (same with Messi but difference is Messi can actually dictate a game and isn't just a goalscorer). He's scored tons of goals for Juve and United, but did those teams get better? Did it help them or his goal stat reputation? Even at Real Madrid, his tons of goals in the league only led to 2 Liga titles in 9 seasons (dominated by Barca) and if it wasn't for the very flukey three CLs in a row his time there would have been seen as a failure probably, with two leagues and 1 CL to show for 9 seasons. Real Madrid have proved since he left that they can win things without him (admittedly it's not against prime Barca but still) Who is to say a more balanced team not deisgned to feed Ronaldo with 10 chances a game wouldn't have had a better chance against Pep's Barca? Pep generally dominated Ronaldo's teams for two years until Pep took his eye off the ball in 2011-2012.

As Zehner constantly says, this obsession with goal stats is fecking ridiculous. The natrual conclusion from your comments is that Ronaldo is about 15 times the player Iniesta was based on goal proportions, and that the likes of Gerrard, lampard were better than Xavi and Zidane. In fact, feck it, might as well say mario Gomez or Luca Toni were all time greats for scoring loads of goals.

Can you not see how fecking ridiculous and moronic tactically it is to just count up goal stats to the detriment of everything else? Ronaldo scores tons of goals but is he a better technical footballer than Xavi and Iniesta? Did he contribute more to the team outside of goalscoring than they did? Does he feck. There are many ways to play and many ways to win a game, a hell of a lot of work goes into getting Ronaldo his goals, and most of the time the hardest work is done by his team mates, not him. But he's the one who gets the statistical credit so superficial fans can't see past that. I bet if you looked through all of Messi and Ronaldo's hundreds of goals, Messi's goals would be of much better quality and a higher degree of difficulty, in general. Ronaldo scores so many basic, scrappy goals it is unreal.

This Americansation stats obsession in modern football is fecking ridiculous. Have you never heard of qualitative data ie the eye test? It's what proper football fans used to do before everyone was obsessed with misleading stats. In fact, what is the point of even watching football? Might as well count up goal stats on wikpieda. Why? even have goalkeeepers, defenders and midfielders? Just play a three on three forward game and see who scores most goals.

fecking sick to the back teeth of idiots (not saying you are in idiot, but in general) who can't tactically analyse a game so fall back to goal stats. Zehner is spot on, there is so much more to football than the final two contacts before a goal. I am just so sick of inbreds saying shite like 'how can you say he played poorly, he scored'? Like a tap in or finish one minute out of 90 excuses the other 89 minutes of fecking shite general play. I am talking generally here, not just about Ronaldo, but certainly Ronaldo and Bruno Fernandes are the biggest examples of stats and highlights players I can think of.

Like I said in my lengthy posts a few pages back where I talked about Ronaldo's personality and celebrity idol culture in general - Ronaldo fanboys are the absolute worst. They're a weird creepy insane cult who twist everything to make him seem like some sort of God. See shite like 'The CR7 Timeline' (cringe). Why do people wank over some dickhead celebrity whose only redeeming feature in life is being able to put a ball in a net a lot? He's an absolute cnut of a guy and should be reviled the world over, not be popular. Blows my mind. He wouldn't piss on any of you if you were on fire ffs, stop rimming him.
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Zidane1982 said:
Just a heads up. I am 40 and been following and playing football all of my life. I have been reading this forum for almost 15 years. I have seen some of you condescend 'newbies' in the past while I have lurked, which makes me cringe, because how new someone is to a football forum has no relevance on how good a poster they are. There are loads of clueless posters on here and, frankly, I don't think your newbie system works, so I would appreciate no snarky comments about me being new from the usual cliquey suspects (not that I want to to keep posting anyway, i will say what I want to say and that will be it, assuming my post is allowed).

I hate Man United and this clown Ronaldo (probably Ronaldo more so). I acknowledge that he has been a top player but, honestly, I don't think he comes anywhere close to Messi, Maradona, Pele, Cruyff etc and he at best limps into the top ten of all time. I think his reputation is vastly out of proportion to his actual ability.The reasons I think he is overrated have mostly been covered by the poster Zehner on here ie the overreliance on goal stats at the expense of general contribution, which is also a feature of his return to your club because I agree with those who say that his goalscoring is far outweighed by the fact his team mates get worse with him in the team. Also the Americanisation of football with emphasis on stats, physique and celebrity. Ronaldo's been the same at every club to be honest, where he has needed an entire team set up for him to get him his out of context, inflated goal stats. Other reasons are I just much prefer players who are more technical than athletic, and who are more possession type players and great in tight spaces, whereas he's more of a pace and power merchant (which is why he is struggling so much now he's lost both). Admittedly in terms of stature and style of play I am much more like Messi or Maradona and can identify better with them (at my infinitely lower level of football, obviously) so it's natural I would prefer them to a tall, athletic counter-attack player like Ronaldo .Like I say I could write an essay on why I think he's overrated, but that isn't what I want to say.

There are two things I want to talk about: first, Ronaldo himself and his attitude and personality, and second, the celebrity culture which surrounds him and pervades this forum (the latter which I will cover in the next post).

On Ronaldo himself, it is quite obvious that he is a complete and utter cnut of a guy. First of all the rape allegations (which given what a creepy weirdo he appears to be you can imagine being very true). Some guys are wrongly accused but I don't believe he has been. He comes across as exactly the type of guy who think he is entitled to do anything he wants and is untouchable, and the same will have been true back when these incidents occurred (because there has been more than one allegation) as he has always believed himself above others. He's just so rich and powerful that I believe he got away with it, whereas less rich and powerful footballers rightly did not.

I think the thing about Ronaldo is there are a lot of myths surrouding his personality, and a lot of things people use to try to defend him. First, the charity work. Anyone with half a brain knows that celebrities do charity work for the PR for the most part, so it's obvious that guys like he and Beckham increase their popularity through PR and perversely become richer through their charity work as more (gullible) people start to follow them. They're essentially using charity work as an investment, which is disgusting. Not all celebrities are like this, but most are. Ronaldo especially is micro managed through his 'brand', with his pathetic and cringeworthy CR7 nickname and Siiiuu celebration being identifiable symbols to help recognise the guy. People peddle his brand when they call him by that name or imitate his celebration, and do other things. So that's one myth.

Second, we have the idea that Ronaldo is 'the hardest worker in football'. He probably does work hard, but I think there will be plenty of harder workers, they're just not as famous as him and, tied to the above, don't have his visibility or PR machine. This myth seems to come from his body (which is just the plastic gimp's vanity, to be quite frank). It is quite clear that he works out so his body looks good, and most of his training is centred on his fitness. He has done very little in the last 10 years to improve his frankly putrid pressing, hold up play, first touch, passing and dribbling (he was always a kick and run dribbler, not a proper weaving dribbler, when he did try to be the latter he was a kid and did stupid tricks all the time as you all know). If he was genuinely a hard worker he'd work harder on his actual ball work, but instead he develops his body which is pointless beause he is weak and slow as piss these days. I also doubt the 'professionalism' bollocks given how he has behaved this summer and his general attitude to others.

There also seems to be a subset of people who think that because team-mates don't speak out about him or other players that they must be popular (we seen this with the laughable defenders of that other overrated tosser, Pogba). Team-mates praise each other all the time, and rarely say anything bad about each other, ironically beause they are being professional. I wouldn't be surprised if loads of his ex-Real Madrid and Juventus and current United team-mates cannot stand him. Truthfully it is pretty obvios Ten Hag has zero time for the guy. He refused to attend when Modric (or Messi) won the Ballon 'dor (which, as an aside is a pointless award and glorified popularity contest and shows how petty he is that he cares so much about it). I am convinced for example that Benzema had a dig at him with his 'some players play poorly for 90 minutes then get named Man of the Match when they score the winner late on, I don't want to be that type of player' comment. Real Madrid have done far better without him than he has without them since he left, so I am sure they feel that they got too little credit, and he got too much because of the stats obsessives pervading modern football. Likewise his Juventus team-mates were probably fed up of the tactic 'feed Ronaldo with 10 chances a game and he will score one or two'.

Then there's the guy's so called 'self-belief'. Personally, I am not sure he is that confident. I think a lot of his arrogance is a front for rampant insecurity. He remembers how ugly he used to be pre dental work and plastic surgery (I still think he's ugly now and so do many women, but that's not the point) so he talks himself up as if he's better looking than guys like Brad Pitt and Henry Cavill, guys who in any realistic opinion are miles better looking than he is. The qualities he thinks he has excuse his actions in his eyes. For example, he said people hated him cos he was rich, handsome and successful, but he overlooks that there have been plenty of footballers who have been rich, successful and handsome (plenty much more handsome than him too) who aren't hated. For example guys like Totti, Pirlo, Cannavaro. There's been loads of good looking, talented, rich footballers who people have respect for so maybe he should realise it's probably just the fact he's a cnut. He is surrounded by sycophantic yes men, which contributes to his delusion and detachment from reality. Another example of this is thinking clubs would be lining up for 'the great Ronaldo' this summer, now he will be shocked that no fecker wants him. Shows he is really deluded.

On the football side of his 'arrogance', I think deep down he knows he is nowhere near as good a Messi (or myriad other players from history to be truthful) so he constantly overcompensates, talking himself up and calling himself the king etc. He is stuck in limbo between arrogance and insecurity, like any narcissist. Like they say the self-proclaimed best is far from the best. Fact is in the old Messi debate with him (which I know is very very boring but relevant to his psyche) the vast majority of football professionals think Messi is the much superior player, that is just the general consensus (and the truth) so he will just have to deal with it. Ultimately Messi offers far more than just goalscoring and he doesn't, he knows the only way to keep up with Messi in shallow people's eyes is to score more goals than him, which is why he's obsessed with his goal stats.

Sorry for any typos, I didn't proof read.
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This should be pinned on top of every Ronaldo thread, in order to make an genuine effort to undo the brainwashing this guy has on his cult members. You sir have just broken the bubble, the idea of Ronaldo being the greatest footballer that's ever lived on and off the pitch.

Yesterday all I heard on social media before the game was, ''ten hag needs to respect Ronaldo'' ''We won't win if he doesn't start'' ''ronaldo deserves better after what he did for us last season'' ''Ten Hag doesn't know what he's doing leaving the GOAT out'' ignoring the fact he played against brentford and we got battered 4-0, ignoring the fact he failed to turn up for our last game of the season. Failing to account for the fact he effectively went on strike missing pre season. Failing to account there's been leaks he undermined ralf, and has already been challenging Ten Hag on the way he delivers training sessions. Failing to account he brought all this on himself.
 
giorno said:
He was a pure poacher with a dodgy touch and very low work rate when Madrid won 3 CL in a row
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Quoted for the truth. Even in his late Madrid days you can see that his ball control wasn’t there anymore. Could still dribble back then, just not on an elite rate
 
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