Jamie Carragher, a former Liverpool defender, believes Manchester United made a mistake by signing Cristiano Ronaldo this summer as he wrote in his Telegraph column.
The Portuguese forward has scored some crucial goals for the Red Devils, but the club as a whole has unable to gel, which Carragher believes is due to the former Real Madrid star.
Read more “I never said Real Madrid will win this season’s Champions League”: Ancelotti“Re-signing Ronaldo last summer was a mistake for United. ‘Keeping him next season will be a tougher challenge,’ he wrote in his Telegraph column.
“They were a more balanced, unified team than they are now,” he added. “United scored 121 in all competitions in 2020/21, their highest tally in 14 years.”
“Every time there is a poor result, there is a lot of commotion made.” Every time a news about him “evaluating his future” at the end of the season is leaked, it causes a stir.
“And there’s commotion when we see the underwhelming reaction whenever United scores and it’s not Ronaldo who scores, as when Marcus Rashford scored a last-minute winner against West Ham in January.”
“There should be no fuss when a manager dismisses a 37-year-old. “There can never be a single player who is bigger than the club.”
No one understood this better than Sir Alex Ferguson, who, in 2006, transferred Ruud Van Nistelrooy, one of the Premier League’s most prolific goal scorers, because he believed the striker’s personal thirst for goals was impeding the development of younger, rising team-mates.
“Letting him go will solve more problems than it creates if his United reunion is restricted to one season,” Carragher wrote.
In United’s 2-0 win over Brighton and Hove Albion earlier this week, Ronaldo snapped a six-game goal drought, his longest since January 2009. But the attention has been on whether the five-time Ballon d’Or winner’s return to Old Trafford last year has benefited the Red Devils.
While there has been conjecture that the 37-year-old may leave at the end of the season, both Harry Maguire and Marcus Rashford have dismissed claims of a divide in the United dressing room.
