Cristiano Ronaldo Staying, and That’s the End of That

By: Daryl | August 7th, 2008

It’s officially officially over. After nearly two months of speculation involving insane sums of money (€100m transfer fee, £200,000 per week wages) and of course Sepp Blatter’s awesomely ill-advised slavery quote, Cristiano Ronaldo is staying at Manchester United.

Alex Ferguson says so (he always did), Ramon Calderon says so (in so many words) and now Cristiano Ronaldo says so:

“I can confirm that I’ll be playing for Manchester United next season. I’ll be playing with my heart and soul and I will fight and honour the shirt with the same desire and dedication as I always have.

My coach [Ferguson] was kind enough to come and see me in Lisbon a few days ago. It was a very honest conversation between two people that respect each other and that I’m sure share a mutual affection and friendship. Sir Alex listened to me, I listened to him and we established that the best for both sides would be for me to continue at Old Trafford.”

The amazing thing is that this has all been ended with some degree of dignity.

Alex Ferguson has got what he always said he’d get. Bernd Schuster has an only slightly less talented but definitely less problematic replacement in Rafael van der Vaart.

And – in a long interview with Portuguese newspaper Publico (published in English here) – Ronaldo accepts a large portion of the blame for everything that’s happened this summer.

“I want to say that I was the one that was responsible for all this controversy. It wasn’t their fault because it was me that said publicly that I wanted to move to Real Madrid. It was also me, although wholly unintentionally, that caused the friction between the two clubs.

…

I knew that Real Madrid were interested in signing me and that they had, allegedly, made a very substantial offer to Manchester United. For a while, I wanted Manchester to accept the offer and for me to move to Madrid. If I denied it I would be deceiving everyone, including myself.”

His desire to move seems to have been based on three things:

1) He’s always wanted to play for Real Madrid
2) Madrid is closer to home than Manchester
3) He felt he’d won everything at Mancehster United

Numbers one and two are personal, and only Ronaldo knows how true they are. But I can definitely see the logic in number three. If Ronaldo had left this summer, he could legitimately say he’d won it all at Old Trafford. He’d be leaving on a high, possibly the high point of his whole career: 42 goals, multiple player of the year awards plus both Premier League and Champions League trophies will be tough to beat.

Of course, a future move to Real Madrid isn’t exactly off the table, and it now seems like the only place C-Ron will leave Man Utd for. Maybe as soon as next summer. But for this summer at least, it’s over.

Will Ronaldo play with the same passion for Man Utd as he did last season? Of course he will. Ronaldo’s desire to go to Real was never because he was unhappy at United. And Alex Ferguson isn’t known for keeping players around if their heart’s not in it. So anyone predicting that C-Ron will sulk his way through the season doesn’t know what they’re talking about.

There’s a lingering concern about how the Man Utd fans will react to Ronaldo, but I don’t think that’s anything to worry about either. There were similar concerns after the 2006 World Cup winking incident and it all turned out fine. Time is on Ronaldo’s side too, because he’ll miss the start of the season to recover from his surgery and so this will likely dissipate long before Ronaldo’s return to action.

So what are we all going to blog about now? Hopefully something else.