Cristiano Ronaldo

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[QUOTE="amolbhatia100, post: 16589181, member: 4910"]I agree with both points and I've mentioned them before as well. So I do agree with you and @jojojo on that. I personally never held a grudge against Ronaldo for leaving.

But at the end of the day, are madrid and Barca really going to go big for Wayne Rooney? He simply doesn't have that option so if he's unhappy then it's premier league teams only I'm afraid. But at the end of the day they both wanted out when United were top dogs and both handled it poorly. That's the point. Maybe thw reason for leaving for one was more understandable but there's a lot of revision regarding Ronaldo's antics when he wanted to leave. He started acting like a baby and the slave comments were very distasteful.[/QUOTE]

I never had a grudge with Ronaldo leaving, it's the way he done it and the timing. He hits his potential I want to leave, when he could have given us atleast a good 2 more years of the complete player he did become. Not just the one in the 2007/08 season

Let's not forget when he was subbed he pulled a hissy fit throwing his towel, he knew he was going to leave. He could have done it with more dignity, talk to fergie about his future plans, not do it through the media
 
Pogue Mahone said:
By who? Spaniards?

I'm being a little flippant, as the whole galactico crap does seem to appeal to a certain breed of international fan but all the stats I've seen have United and Madrid fairly evenly matched in terms of global appeal.

Regarding things being different had Ronaldo stayed with United, I think they definitely would have been but not in the way you mean. If he hadn't fecked off to Madrid, the gulf between the two teams in terms of trophies and global prestige over the subsequent few years would have been even bigger. United would have almost certainly won more trophies, while Madrid won less. The fact we failed to reinvest so much of his fee and still did so well just goes to show what an unstoppable force we could have become with Ronaldo still in our team.

The Messi v Ronaldo narrative has definitely been an interesting diversion these last few years but don't see why it wouldn't have been similarly compelling even if they played in different leagues.
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We're matched in terms of global appeal, definitely. But I think Madrid are just seen as something slightly more powerful. Many neutrals would say that we're as big as each other (some would say we're bigger), but it's an intangible glamour that Madrid have. It's hard to explain really.

I definitely think the Ronaldo and Messi debate would have been less compelling with them playing in different leagues.
They now almost have the capacity to stop each other. You have the El Classicos, the same opposition and directly related goal records, and generally fewer excuses.
And even then you still had people who believed the difference in team-mates is what made Messi better.

Ronaldo could have contributed to us being a force.
Obviously he couldn't have his cake and eat it, because by joining Madrid he had that bigger platform for him personally, but he played in a team less equipped to win trophies. A step forward and a step back.

When you factor in the success Barcelona then went on to have (in hindsight) you wonder just how good Ronaldo would have needed to be at United, and how many trophies we'd have had to win in order for him to be seen as the world's best - considering Messi was acknowledged to have more talent.

You could be right though, maybe Ronaldo would have been better off staying here (if his motivation was to become a bigger star and the best in the world) but I don't believe he saw it that way.
 
Speak said:
We're matched in terms of global appeal, definitely. But I think Madrid are just seen as something slightly more powerful. Many neutrals would say that we're as big as each other (some would say we're bigger), but it's an intangible glamour that Madrid have. It's hard to explain really.

I definitely think the Ronaldo and Messi debate would have been less compelling with them playing in different leagues.
They now almost have the capacity to stop each other. You have the El Classicos, the same opposition and directly related goal records, and generally fewer excuses.
And even then you still had people who believed the difference in team-mates is what made Messi better.

Ronaldo could have contributed to us being a force.
Obviously he couldn't have his cake and eat it, because by joining Madrid he had that bigger platform for him personally, but he played in a team less equipped to win trophies. A step forward and a step back.

When you factor in the success Barcelona then went on to have (in hindsight) you wonder just how good Ronaldo would have needed to be at United, and how many trophies we'd have had to win in order for him to be seen as the world's best - considering Messi was acknowledged to have more talent.

You could be right though, maybe Ronaldo would have been better off staying here (if his motivation was to become a bigger star and the best in the world) but I don't believe he saw it that way.
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You're looking too hard. They're bigger in Spain, Portugal etc. United are bigger in Britain, Asia etc. It's all there is to it.
 
amolbhatia100 said:
You're looking too hard. They're bigger in Spain, Portugal etc. United are bigger in Britain, Asia etc. It's all there is to it.
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They are also much bigger in South America, the continent where most of the best footballers are / have been from. Most of those want to go to RM and then Barca.
 
amolbhatia100 said:
You're looking too hard. They're bigger in Spain, Portugal etc. United are bigger in Britain, Asia etc. It's all there is to it.
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Yeah, it's possibly that simple.
But I think the fact that many of the very best of this generation (and beyond) have tended to play for Barcelona or Madrid at some point is a factor.
 
united_99 said:
They are also much bigger in South America, the continent where most of the best footballers are / have been from. Most of those want to go to RM and then Barca.
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I never commented on where the bigger talent comes from. But much of this "glamour" of madrid is all manufactured due to the galacticos era. We're as big a ticket a round the world as madrid are. But given where Ronaldo comes from, madrid are bigger.
 
Speak said:
Yeah, it's possibly that simple.
But I think the fact that many of the very best of this generation (and beyond) have tended to play for Barcelona or Madrid at some point is a factor.
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Is it the clubs, or they are just lucky with the warm country's. United are handicapped with the weather and at times the city they are in, if Manchester was always in a hot country, I think We could attract anyone
 
amolbhatia100 said:
I never commented on where the bigger talent comes from. But much of this "glamour" of madrid is all manufactured due to the galacticos era. We're as big a ticket a round the world as madrid are. But given where Ronaldo comes from, madrid are bigger.
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Well the fact that the best players aka as South Americans prefer Madrid, has been one of the main reasons they have been successful over the years and decades. Which as a result has contributed a lot to RM's fame. We are bigger in America and Asia, but for South Americans RM will always be bigger, well unless we get more and more Di Marias and Falcaos.
 
2mufc0 said:
I'm not defending Rooney's actions here, to publicly criticise the team was stupid to say the least. But he did have a point we just sold Ronaldo for a world record fee and brought in Valencia and Owen, on top of that Rooney was hitting his best form scoring goals for fun. Imo he was not wrong to question the club, it shows he wants to be successful, but should have been done in private. Sir Alex said in his autobiography that his head was turned by his agent, which is no excuse but you have to take things into context.
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I am not buying it tbh. He wasn't at all purely altruistic in nature when he brought up the lack of 'big-name' signings. I've already made a huge post on that in a thread about Rooney's shenanigans on 2010 and will just quote it.

Joga Bonito said:
There is no denying the fact that we have been poor in the transfer windows following Ronaldo and Tevez's departure. Fergie thought some of the 'value' signings he made such as Obertan, Bebe, Tosic, Diouf, Powell, Zaha, Angelo Henriquez etc would go on to establish themselves in the first team squad. He was probably trying to model his signings after the examples of Vidic and Evra rather than the likes of Rooney, Berbatov or Veron. The only exception to his transfer strategy was RVP who was well worth his value of 24 mil for a brilliant 30 goal a season striker.

In hindsight it didn't work out but I am sure many of us weren't too uncomfortable when Fergie was operating under this model. I know we didn't sign the big names like Sneijder, Hazard and Lucas during this period but we had complete faith in Fergie. I was rather excited at seeing his value signings like Obertan, Bebe, Henriquez, Smalling, Jones and Powell develop than be disappointed at missing out on the 'big names'. Fergie also placed his faith in some of the guys from the academy with the likes of Cleverley, Ravel Morrison, Pogba, Tunnicliffe and Welbeck being trusted to play a big part in our future. It didn't work out the way I thought it would but I had no qualms about the way Fergie operated at that time. In fact it would have been a perfectly sustainable model had we shown a bit more nous in the promising youngsters we targeted and were more competitive occasionally when the player we chased really mattered (Hazard, Lucas etc). Whether it was Fergie's judgement which was poor when it came to the younger transfer targets or whether the scouting department were poor or both we won't really know. I also have no idea if Fergie was really obstinate when it came to transfer/agent fees or whether there were restrictions placed on him. We see the club splashing the cash now because they don't have a choice and the squad is in dire need of reinforcement.

Rooney at that point of time didn't have the advantage of the hindsight that we now possess. His and his agent objective was fairly simple, to get more money. His concern that the club wasn't spending more money was just a facade/false justification to achieve his ulterior motive. At that point of time we had just lost out the title to a brilliant record-setting Chelsea by a single point and went out of the CL to LVG's Bayern unfairly due to Rafael's dismissal. Rooney was brilliant during that course of the season and his absence and Berbatov's inability to step up were the prime reasons why we 'failed' at the business end of the season. It wasn't as though we weren't competitive or were dire. There was no reason to panic and no one was doubting Fergie or the squad at that time. We wished for star signings as we always do but there was no clamour for it. The very fact that the next season we went on to win the league and reach the final of the Champions League shows it. I am not buying the theory that Rooney predicted a demise 4-5 years ahead which was the result of many factors with poor investment/transfer dealings just being one of them. He was United's best player at that point of time and England's best player as well. He just used his status and importance to the team to strongarm United into handing him a better contract. If he was really concerned about the state of the team he should have just left United as he was disillusioned at the signings we were making. He didn't. Neither did he say anything about it when we bought De Gea, Jones and Young the next season.... Hardly top players at that time were they? His sole purpose was to get an improved contract. Simple.
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Scored in the 95th minute against Denmark tonight. Taking his goal tally to 51 goals in 115 matches for Portugal. His goal number 443 totally in his whole career.
 
Single handed carrying Portugal national team. If only he had Di Maria, Higuain, Aguero etc as support cast. Oh well.
 
amolbhatia100 said:
I never commented on where the bigger talent comes from. But much of this "glamour" of madrid is all manufactured due to the galacticos era. We're as big a ticket a round the world as madrid are. But given where Ronaldo comes from, madrid are bigger.
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Madrid's 'glamour' has started way before that galactico's era.
 
The Man Himself said:
Single handed carrying Portugal national team. If only he had Di Maria, Higuain, Aguero etc as support cast. Oh well.
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Apart from the goal, he had a poor game. And don't make Portugal worse than they are. They have some decent players, tbf.
 
SirAF said:
Scored in the 95th minute against Denmark tonight. Taking his goal tally to 51 goals in 115 matches for Portugal. His goal number 443 totally in his whole career.
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You've done well if your goal count can be mistake for a formation in my book.
 
The Man Himself said:
Single handed carrying Portugal national team. If only he had Di Maria, Higuain, Aguero etc as support cast. Oh well.
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He actually missed one on one chance his teammates set him up earlier in the game.
 
DesiBD said:
Apart from the goal, he had a poor game. And don't make Portugal worse than they are. They have some decent players, tbf.
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Decent players don't equate to quality players the better teams have. Just goes to show importance of good team. A player who plays out wide can easily be devoid of impact if you don't let others to bring him in game or mark him with multiple players knowing that the others who will be set free as a result won't impact anyway.

Amar__ said:
He actually missed one on one chance his teammates set him up earlier in the game.
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An odd chance setup doesn't do much in grand scheme of things. If not for him, they can forget even dreaming of qualifying for Euro.
 
Snake Plissken said:
Was it Coutinho who repeatedly played him clean in on goal against Sweden during the WC play off?
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João Moutinho*, with two beauties of through balls (especially the 3rd goal was absurd) and Hugo Almeida with the other assist after being played in by, again, Moutinho. Cristiano was still MotM of that game though, as he also created a decent amount of chances in the 1st half and did quite a lot of work all-round. That's not to say other players didn't also shine in that game, especially Moutinho was imperious and Ibra on the opposite side scored twice from less-than-half chances.


In today's game it was a combination of a great leap from virtual stand-still by Cristiano, Schmeichel completely misreading that situation and an excellent pacey cross from Quaresma that got them the winner. Other than that he hadn't been that great, but then again no other Portugal MF or FW was doing better.
 
The Man Himself said:
Decent players don't equate to quality players the better teams have. Just goes to show importance of good team. A player who plays out wide can easily be devoid of impact if you don't let others to bring him in game or mark him with multiple players knowing that the others who will be set free as a result won't impact anyway.


An odd chance setup doesn't do much in grand scheme of things. If not for him, they can forget even dreaming of qualifying for Euro.
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Yeah, they should be doing all the job for him. He looks nothing special for them either, he doesn't really deserve special mentions judging his games for national team.
 
Amar__ said:
Yeah, they should be doing all the job for him. He looks nothing special for them either, he doesn't really deserve special mentions judging his games for national team.
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He took them to world cup through the playoffs. Without him they wouldnt have played world cup and wont play Euro.
And same can be said of Messi if you put argument that way. Argentina won't be any worse without him so he doesn't deserve any special mention judging by him doing feck all in whole of knockout stage of world cup.
 
The Man Himself said:
Decent players don't equate to quality players the better teams have. Just goes to show importance of good team. A player who plays out wide can easily be devoid of impact if you don't let others to bring him in game or mark him with multiple players knowing that the others who will be set free as a result won't impact anyway.


An odd chance setup doesn't do much in grand scheme of things. If not for him, they can forget even dreaming of qualifying for Euro.
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For the most part, he is playing centrally, not out wide. Even then, he doesn't have much influence. As mentioned above, he also missed a 1v1 chance. Although not all of Portugal's players are quality, they're good enough to perform better than they've done recently. In reality, he hasn't been anything special for the national team since the playoffs against Sweden.
 
The Man Himself said:
Single handed carrying Portugal national team. If only he had Di Maria, Higuain, Aguero etc as support cast. Oh well.
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He scored the decisive goal and made a great assist for a Nani header which missed the goal by inches but my MOM was Ricardo Carvalho.
 
DesiBD said:
For the most part, he is playing centrally, not out wide. Even then, he doesn't have much influence. As mentioned above, he also missed a 1v1 chance. Although not all of Portugal's players are quality, they're good enough to perform better than they've done recently. In reality, he hasn't been anything special for the national team since the playoffs against Sweden.
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No player is special in every game. If you put Messi in current Portugal team, they won't do any better. It is worth taking into account that Ronaldo was carrying injury at world cup.
 
Sly said:
He scored the decisive goal and made a great assist for a Nani header which missed the goal by inches but my MOM was Ricardo Carvalho.
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Yeah Portugal will need strong defensive backbone and discipline (unlike that displayed at WC). Then the forwards can impact game more. If team is vulnerable to concede anytime, there is only so much the forwards can do.
 
Oneunited26 said:
Messi before guadiola took over, would show flashes of brilliance but was always on the sidelines, so Ronaldo's motives were not about matching messi. He already surpassed messi, he just wanted a change, I think the timing was off to be honest, but oh well
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Not my intention to derail this thread, but thought this warranted a quick reply...

Pre-Guardiola: finished 3rd (2007) and 2nd (2008) in the BdO, twice 2nd (2007 & 2008) in the FIFA WPOTY, won Young Player of the Tournament in the 2007 Copa América, was included in the ESM Team of the Year for 2005-06 (!) and 2007-08 and won Don Balón's Best Foreign Player in La Liga for 2006-07. Had worked up his way to becoming a starter for what would turn out to be Barça's CL-winning campaign in 05/06 until he got injured v Chelsea. Scored his Maradona replica goal v Getafe and a hat-trick in the Clásico within a month of each other back in 2007. All this while suffering 3 major injuries in 2 years.

Some sidelines.
 
The Man Himself said:
He took them to world cup through the playoffs. Without him they wouldnt have played world cup and wont play Euro.
And same can be said of Messi if you put argument that way. Argentina won't be any worse without him so he doesn't deserve any special mention judging by him doing feck all in whole of knockout stage of world cup.
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He was pretty shit in qualifiers in first place and maybe with some other player instead of him they would maybe qualified earlier, or at least with him at least showing up in some games. They qualified without him for the world cup in playoffs for the previous world cup so that's really invalid argument.

I have no idea why are you mentioning Messi who scored pretty much all of Argentina's goals in the group stage, and why are you even comparing world cup games with qualifying games, or even mentioning Messi at all because I never said he was great for Argentina(altough he is clearly better for Argentina than Ronaldo is for Portugal).
 
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The Man Himself said:
No player is special in every game. If you put Messi in current Portugal team, they won't do any better. It is worth taking into account that Ronaldo was carrying injury at world cup.
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Messi has much more influence on how a team plays than Ronaldo does, so I really doubt that.
 
Our current u21 team will take any important part in our national team renovation. It´s a very interesting generation and they just beat Holland 2-0 away and 5-4 at home from the play offs. I can see some players having a chance in our main team in the near future. Raphael Guerreiro, Bernardo Silva, Carlos Mané, Ruben Neves should make it if they keep evolving. And we were missing Ilori, Bruma and João Mário (played very well for the main team against France and Denmark).
 
The Man Himself said:
Yeah Portugal will need strong defensive backbone and discipline (unlike that displayed at WC). Then the forwards can impact game more. If team is vulnerable to concede anytime, there is only so much the forwards can do.
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I think we will definitely improve in defensive terms because Fernando Santos is a very good defensive manager (as seen with his work with Greece and how they are now shambles under Ranieri). Our current weak point is our right back. Cédric wasn´t bad tonight but he has to improve. In the left side we have Coentrão and Raphael Guerreiro (Lorient) as a choice as he is doing very well for the u21. Center backs will be Pepe and Ricardo Carvalho (if he mantains form). Then at our midfield a triangle of William Carvalho, Tiago and Moutinho, i think we won´t have problems in terms of defensive stability. Our problem will be as always no decent striker.
 
Is there not a thread specifically designed for the Ronaldo v Messi debate?
 
Sly said:
I think we will definitely improve in defensive terms because Fernando Santos is a very good defensive manager (as seen with his work with Greece and how they are now shambles under Ranieri). Our current weak point is our right back. Cédric wasn´t bad tonight but he has to improve. In the left side we have Coentrão and Raphael Guerreiro (Lorient) as a choice as he is doing very well for the u21. Center backs will be Pepe and Ricardo Carvalho (if he mantains form). Then at our midfield a triangle of William Carvalho, Tiago and Moutinho, i think we won´t have problems in terms of defensive stability. Our problem will be as always no decent striker.
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Ya that can work into a competitive team if there is a genuine and good striker upfront.
 
Sly said:
He scored the decisive goal and made a great assist for a Nani header which missed the goal by inches but my MOM was Ricardo Carvalho.
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Yeah Cristiano was easily your best non-DF player tonight. The cross for Nani was actually not such a good instance to use as example though, he took the wrong option there IMO, there was a player coming in completely unmarked at the far post that would've been a lot easier to convert than from Nani's situation. In the 2nd half there was also a moment where he was in space with only really one Danish DF in front of him and instead of sprinting straight for goal he decided to go for the pass into space that would've meant a 1v1 for that runner, good decision this time but poor execution cost you that very good opportunity IMO, his pass had totally wrong spin on it and ended up wide of the runner unfortunately.

Other than that his interplay and esp. his passing between the lines was of a very high standard and he looked incredibly full of energy all game. Also didn't deserve that yellow for the foul at the end.
I have to say that this season he really looks more involved in chance creation and teamwork (for RM as well), noticeably so even! Can only be better for you guys in the long run, I think. Quaresma also looks somewhat reborn since moving back to Portugal (although I'm only basing this on his EL performances of last season and seeing flashes of him like tonight).
 
The Man Himself said:
Ya that can work into a competitive team if there is a genuine and good striker upfront.
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Speaking of strikers (a bit of off topic), i was reading this on "A Bola" website and apparently highly rated Porto youth rank striker André Silva (second best top scorer in the recent Euro U19 tournament) is going to join one of the big clubs in England. Wonder which club is it. He´s a very interesting player.

http://www.abola.pt/nnh/ver.aspx?id=506668
 
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