It has been well publicized that one of the greatest players of all time, Cristiano Ronaldo, is unhappy at Manchester United. Benched by new manager Eric Ten Hag, Ronaldo has been very open about the possibility of leaving the club in search of game time as his career winds down. In the summer he skipped United’s preseason tour of America and publicly pushed to find a new club. In the end, no one could afford his monster wages, and in all honesty I’d bet on him staying at Manchester United until his contract runs out in the summer. But I still think it would be interesting to take a look at some of the super clubs he was linked with this summer and ask, how would Ronaldo fit?
Among the rumors that I actually thought made some sense this summer was that which linked Ronaldo as a replacement for the outgoing Robert Lewandowski at Bayern Munich. Granted, Bayern could never afford his almost half-a-million pounds a week wages, but in some respects this move would have made sense. Lewandowski is a highly prolific striker, and so is Ronaldo when he plays; to some degree it would have been a like-for-like replacement situation for the German club. However, there is more to the move than just positional play and statistics. Manager Julian Nagelsman plays a very physically intense style that Ronaldo is well known to be incompatible with, especially at 37. He is a luxury player; he does no work off the ball, but will score bucket loads of goals if you give it to him in the box. That lack of effort would not fly in the intense style Nagelsman drives into his players, let alone the league as a whole. The German Bundesliga is known for being a very fast-paced, end-to-end division that suits young, athletic players. While still very athletic, Ronaldo is far from young and has way too many miles in his legs to play at the necessary pace across an entire season as Lewandowski did for Bayern for the last eight seasons. Money aside, this transfer is still a big no.
As a Chelsea fan, you’d think I’d be ecstatic at the prospect of having an all-time great play for my club-but you’d be very wrong. Chelsea present many of the same issues Bayern do in how they stack up as a potential suitor for Ronaldo. At the time of the rumor in August, Chelsea also had a press-themed, high paced system in place under another German, Thomas Tuchel. His system, like Nagelsman’s, requires a lot of defensive running that Ronaldo cannot provide, as well as a very fluid attacking setup that is not designed to flatter a classic striker like Ronaldo. At this point in his career, he is a penalty box poacher. But one cannot have success playing that way in a system designed to confuse defenses with constant interchange of players across the front line. For this reason, Chelsea is another no.
Right off the bat, this one is a no because of Ronaldo’s history with Real Madrid, Atlético’s arch rivals. He is the all-time leading goal scorer for Real, and beat them in two separate Champions League finals. In 2014, he scored deep into added time to make it 4-1, and in 2016 he scored the winning penalty in the shootout that decided the title. Then, in 2017 he scored a hat trick against them in the semifinal to knock them out, and did the same while playing for Juventus against Atlético in the round of 16 in 2019.
Aside from these issues, there actually isn’t much wrong with this move. Atlético play a much more old school, rigid style than either Chelsea or Bayern, with a very compact defense composed of two banks of four and two strikers who play on the counter attack. Despite his age, Ronaldo is still an absolutely rapid player with or without the ball at his feet, which would make this a feasible option. Too bad this will never happen.
The potential move to Paris Saint-Germain is the scariest of the lot, because it actually made quite a lot of sense at the time. PSG has the biggest budget of any club in the world, and before Kylian Mbappe’s contract was renewed in August, it looked like they may have needed a striker. Ronaldo is also a huge commercial draw, something that PSG is very open about admiring as they try to build their global brand. And above all else, this move would have meant seeing Ronaldo play alongside Lionel Messi. The idea of one club putting the two best players of all time on the field at the same time is extremely frightening for fans of any other club. And this idea still hasn’t taken Neymar into account. He is a former third-place finisher in the Ballon d’Or and on current form, the best player in the world at the time of writing. With that attack, there is no telling what sort of damage would be done to opposing defenses.
But, as with the other three rumored destinations, PSG presents issues as well. The big one, which I’ll speak about here, would be the scale of the egos in that team. Messi and Ronaldo both have claims to be the greatest of all time, which brings with it a massive ego boost. Neymar is also known to be a massive diva and has ego problems. I have no doubt in my mind that this move would have caused the PSG team to fall apart from within. Still, I would jump at the chance to see those three all play together, so I’ll leave this one as a maybe.