Cristiano Ronaldo’s Time At Manchester United Comes To A Sad End

On Thursday afternoon Manchester United put out a 67-word statement that brought to an end Cristiano Ronaldo’s second spell at the club.

“Cristiano Ronaldo is to leave Manchester United by mutual agreement, with immediate effect. The club thanks him for his immense contribution across two spells at Old Trafford, scoring 145 goals in 346 appearances, and wishes him and his family well for the future.”

“Everyone at Manchester United remains focused on continuing the team’s progress under Erik ten Hag and working together to deliver success on the pitch.”

There was to be no glorious farewell, no happy ending, no waving goodbye to the packed stands at Old Trafford as his name was sung by the supporters.

Instead United released the statement as Ronaldo was over 4,000 miles away in Qatar preparing to play in his fifth World Cup finals with Portugal.

It was a largely functional statement, bereft of any real warmth, and a good proportion of it was actually focused on looking to the future without him.

The overwhelming feeling at Old Trafford is one of relief that the saga with Ronaldo is now in the past and the club can move on.

As soon as Ronaldo said last week he had “no respect” for his manager Erik ten Hag and that United had “betrayed” him it was clear he had played his last game for United.

Inside the club there was no talk about how they could broker a peace deal with Ronaldo, but rather how they could now expedite his departure.

Ronaldo had become an emotional drain; a damaging sideshow who was now beginning to overshadow the progress the club was making on the pitch.

After United had beaten Tottenham 2-0 at Old Trafford last month, widely recognised as their most impressive and complete performance of the season so far, the focus quickly slipped from that when it emerged Ronaldo had refused to join the game as a substitute, and instead had walked down the tunnel.

In United’s last game before the World Cup break earlier this month they beat Fulham 2-1 with a dramatic late winning goal from Alejandro Garnacho, which was his first ever Premier League goal, but once again, within hours, the focus was instead on Ronaldo when news filtered out that he had given an interview to Piers Morgan in which he had been highly critical about the club.

He was also a financial drain, earning an estimated weekly wage of around £500,000 from United, and delivering very little in return. In 520 minutes in the Premier League so far this season he has only scored a single goal.

It is estimated United will save around £16 million throughout the rest of the season now that they do not have to pay the remaining seven months of Ronaldo’s contract.

United have acted decisively to terminate his contract and remove an increasingly disruptive influence from the club.

Neither party wanted to drag this out over several months, bringing in lawyers and haggling with each other over every detail.

They are now both happy: Ronaldo wants a new start and United want a new striker.

It might appear that Ronaldo was bundled out of Old Trafford with unseemly haste, but he is delighted and now has the freedom to find a new club for the second half of the season.

His intention in giving his now infamous interview in which he was so critical of United’s owners and manager was always to back the club into a corner and force them to let him go. His combative approach has worked perfectly.

Mingled with the relief at Old Trafford is also a sense of sadness that it didn’t need to be this way, and that the player and the club could have managed a better exit.

But like in any relationship, when the love has been so intense, the break-up is bound to be ugly and difficult. United have previously experienced these partings with other club legends including George Best, Roy Keane and David Beckham.

In years to come United and their fans will prefer to remember Ronaldo’s 145 goals and the three Premier League titles and one Champions League he helped bring to the club instead of the walk-outs, his refusal to play and that interview.