Cristiano Ronaldo has seemingly told Real Madrid
he wants to leave the club, with Manchester United a potential
destination. But would he want to return? Could they afford him? And how
would he fit into Jose Mourinho's plans?
Why book the support act when you can get the headliner? That is the question Ed Woodward and Jose Mourinho will be asking themselves on Friday following the stunning news which will send ripples through football.
Manchester United were said to be readying themselves to announce the signing of Real Madrid striker Alvaro Morata on Monday, with a fee of around £64 million being mentioned for the 24-year-old.
But there is a reason Morata started only 14 games in La Liga this season: Cristiano Ronaldo. And if the reports coming out of Portugal and Spain are correct today, he could be available for transfer this summer.
Morata would be an astute acquisition for Mourinho, a manager who knows him well from his time at Real Madrid, but bringing Ronaldo back to Old Trafford would be a truly transformative transfer, for United and for the Premier League.
After breaking the world record to sign Paul Pogba for £89m last summer, a reported fee of €200m (£175m) for Ronaldo would absolutely obliterate it. But for that astronomical sum United would be bringing back one of their favourite sons, a commercial juggernaut and arguably the greatest player of all time.
This is why signing Ronaldo would make perfect sense for United
A player at the peak of his powers
It is clear that Ronaldo is not the player he was when he left United in 2009. By that point he had already evolved from the flashy winger who signed as a teenager from Sporting into a devastating all-round forward, and his development continued at the Bernabeu as he broke the club’s all-time goalscoring record.
At 32, he no longer has the same explosive pace and dynamism but Ronaldo is arguably more effective than ever. With manager Zinedine Zidane carefully managing his minutes in La Liga, Ronaldo was fresh as a daisy for the knockout stages of the Champions League, scoring 10 goals from the quarter-final onwards, and two in the final against Juventus. It was a supreme display of match-winning prowess.
Like Alan Shearer, he has shed some of his more youthful attributes but concentrated his powers to become a devastatingly effective centre-forward. United need a new No. 9 after losing Zlatan Ibrahimovic; Ronaldo is now the best in the business, and far superior to Morata.
The Spaniard has an impressive record of 103 goals in 271 club matches dating back to his time with Real Madrid’s B team, and nine in 20 matches for the national team, but Ronaldo scored his 600th career goal for club and country in the Champions League final. There is no comparison.
Ronaldo is still king, and will surely be recognised as such with the Ballon d’Or again this year – a joint record fifth along with Lionel Messi.
How would he fit into the United side?
The vacancy left by Ibrahimovic and his damaged knee is an easy one to fill. United are likely to sign more players to flit around the edges, Inter forward Ivan Perisic is a key target, but there is a gaping hole at centre-forward.
This is how United could look next season, if Ronaldo signs:
Would Ronaldo consider a return to United?
Back in 2014, Ronaldo addressed this question and his answer was definitive.
" I have good memories from Manchester and when I watch sometimes the games I miss it a lot because it's part of me I left in England. Just because I play in Madrid I'm not going to miss speaking with the old guys so, when I have an opportunity, I speak with Sir Alex Ferguson. It was important for me when I played there, when my life was there, so it is good to speak with him because I'll never forget who really helped me. I don't close the door (on returning to England), so maybe in the future. I hope so, because I know the league, I know the players, I know the atmosphere." Going back to Old Trafford would be like going home. He won three league titles, one FA Cup, three League Cups and the Champions League during his previous spell and the lure of adding to that collection could be hard to ignore.
Can such a fee be justified?
We know the transfer market is subject to extraordinary upwards pressure. Jordan Pickford has just become the third most expensive goalkeeper of all time after moving to Everton for £30m; Virgil van Dijk is said to be valued at £60m; Leicester have just signed Harry Maguire from Hull for £17m. The concept of value for money in football is elastic, and stretches every summer.
Even taking that into account, the proposed figure for Ronaldo seems ludicrous - £175m from £89m would be a frankly ridiculous escalation of the transfer record, which has not doubled since 1968 when Juventus paid Varese £500,00 for Pietro Anastasi, five years after Roma bought Angelo Sormani from Mantova for £250,000. Comparable leaps to the figures being talked about for Ronaldo would be when Barcelona paid £922,000 for Johan Cryuff in 1973, when the previous record was £500,000, and then £3m for Diego Maradona in 1982, when the previous record was £1.75m.
With Ronaldo now 32, conventional wisdom would have it that he is past his peak and has one or two years left at the top. But conventional wisdom did not apply to Ibrahimovic, who at 35 scored 28 goals for United last season. Given Ronaldo’s legendary work ethic and conditioning, there is no reason to doubt that he could have four years left at the elite level.
Still, that isn’t much of a return on £175m, and Ronaldo would have little sell-on value unless United could coax a team from China into paying a huge sum for a spent force. But the key matter to bear in mind is that signing Ronaldo is not only a sporting matter for United, it is a commercial operation as well. And signing Ronaldo would give them ownership of the biggest cash cow on the planet.
In December, a firm called Hookit estimated that Ronaldo’s staggering social media reach generated £371m of value for Nike alone, across 329 posts on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter. “Cristiano is one of the top influencers on the planet who has effectively leveraged his social following and engagement into a media powerhouse to drive tremendous value for his sponsors,” Hookit co-founder Scott Tilton told Forbes, who named Ronaldo the richest athlete on the planet last year. “He's been incredibly effective at integrating his sponsors into the content he shares with his over 240 million global followers.” That number has swelled in the past six months and Ronaldo is by far and away the most followed sports star in the world.
United, in turn, are incredibly bullish about their own social media presence. After getting their one billionth Facebook interaction, managing director Richard Arnold told a Web Summit in Lisbon last year:
" The level we are engaging at, to put it in context, is akin to religion. John Lennon was famously quoted as saying The Beatles were ‘bigger than Jesus’. Whilst we wouldn't want to be disrespectful in that way, what you are seeing from a measurement point of view is that the level of engagement and fervour we get is on par with the world's major religions and those are the only things at the same level as Manchester United in terms of that interaction and engagement." In conjunction with their social media assault, United’s highly evolved commercial operation has seen them set up a dense network of sponsors and partners in every corner of the globe – often to derision, but always to the benefit of the club’s bottom line. Harnessing this structure and uniting it with the global Ronaldo brand would create an unprecedented commercial operation. An event horizon in football monetisation.
Maybe you can't make back £175m - but who cares anyway? Football isn't just about money and the value of experiencing a few more seasons from one of the greatest players in history - maybe the greatest - has its own allure. If United have a chance of getting this deal done, they should.
Why book the support act when you can get the headliner? That is the question Ed Woodward and Jose Mourinho will be asking themselves on Friday following the stunning news which will send ripples through football.
Manchester United were said to be readying themselves to announce the signing of Real Madrid striker Alvaro Morata on Monday, with a fee of around £64 million being mentioned for the 24-year-old.
But there is a reason Morata started only 14 games in La Liga this season: Cristiano Ronaldo. And if the reports coming out of Portugal and Spain are correct today, he could be available for transfer this summer.
Morata would be an astute acquisition for Mourinho, a manager who knows him well from his time at Real Madrid, but bringing Ronaldo back to Old Trafford would be a truly transformative transfer, for United and for the Premier League.
After breaking the world record to sign Paul Pogba for £89m last summer, a reported fee of €200m (£175m) for Ronaldo would absolutely obliterate it. But for that astronomical sum United would be bringing back one of their favourite sons, a commercial juggernaut and arguably the greatest player of all time.
This is why signing Ronaldo would make perfect sense for United
A player at the peak of his powers
It is clear that Ronaldo is not the player he was when he left United in 2009. By that point he had already evolved from the flashy winger who signed as a teenager from Sporting into a devastating all-round forward, and his development continued at the Bernabeu as he broke the club’s all-time goalscoring record.
At 32, he no longer has the same explosive pace and dynamism but Ronaldo is arguably more effective than ever. With manager Zinedine Zidane carefully managing his minutes in La Liga, Ronaldo was fresh as a daisy for the knockout stages of the Champions League, scoring 10 goals from the quarter-final onwards, and two in the final against Juventus. It was a supreme display of match-winning prowess.
Like Alan Shearer, he has shed some of his more youthful attributes but concentrated his powers to become a devastatingly effective centre-forward. United need a new No. 9 after losing Zlatan Ibrahimovic; Ronaldo is now the best in the business, and far superior to Morata.
The Spaniard has an impressive record of 103 goals in 271 club matches dating back to his time with Real Madrid’s B team, and nine in 20 matches for the national team, but Ronaldo scored his 600th career goal for club and country in the Champions League final. There is no comparison.
Ronaldo is still king, and will surely be recognised as such with the Ballon d’Or again this year – a joint record fifth along with Lionel Messi.
How would he fit into the United side?
The vacancy left by Ibrahimovic and his damaged knee is an easy one to fill. United are likely to sign more players to flit around the edges, Inter forward Ivan Perisic is a key target, but there is a gaping hole at centre-forward.
This is how United could look next season, if Ronaldo signs:
Would Ronaldo consider a return to United?
Back in 2014, Ronaldo addressed this question and his answer was definitive.
" I have good memories from Manchester and when I watch sometimes the games I miss it a lot because it's part of me I left in England. Just because I play in Madrid I'm not going to miss speaking with the old guys so, when I have an opportunity, I speak with Sir Alex Ferguson. It was important for me when I played there, when my life was there, so it is good to speak with him because I'll never forget who really helped me. I don't close the door (on returning to England), so maybe in the future. I hope so, because I know the league, I know the players, I know the atmosphere." Going back to Old Trafford would be like going home. He won three league titles, one FA Cup, three League Cups and the Champions League during his previous spell and the lure of adding to that collection could be hard to ignore.
Can such a fee be justified?
We know the transfer market is subject to extraordinary upwards pressure. Jordan Pickford has just become the third most expensive goalkeeper of all time after moving to Everton for £30m; Virgil van Dijk is said to be valued at £60m; Leicester have just signed Harry Maguire from Hull for £17m. The concept of value for money in football is elastic, and stretches every summer.
Even taking that into account, the proposed figure for Ronaldo seems ludicrous - £175m from £89m would be a frankly ridiculous escalation of the transfer record, which has not doubled since 1968 when Juventus paid Varese £500,00 for Pietro Anastasi, five years after Roma bought Angelo Sormani from Mantova for £250,000. Comparable leaps to the figures being talked about for Ronaldo would be when Barcelona paid £922,000 for Johan Cryuff in 1973, when the previous record was £500,000, and then £3m for Diego Maradona in 1982, when the previous record was £1.75m.
With Ronaldo now 32, conventional wisdom would have it that he is past his peak and has one or two years left at the top. But conventional wisdom did not apply to Ibrahimovic, who at 35 scored 28 goals for United last season. Given Ronaldo’s legendary work ethic and conditioning, there is no reason to doubt that he could have four years left at the elite level.
Still, that isn’t much of a return on £175m, and Ronaldo would have little sell-on value unless United could coax a team from China into paying a huge sum for a spent force. But the key matter to bear in mind is that signing Ronaldo is not only a sporting matter for United, it is a commercial operation as well. And signing Ronaldo would give them ownership of the biggest cash cow on the planet.
In December, a firm called Hookit estimated that Ronaldo’s staggering social media reach generated £371m of value for Nike alone, across 329 posts on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter. “Cristiano is one of the top influencers on the planet who has effectively leveraged his social following and engagement into a media powerhouse to drive tremendous value for his sponsors,” Hookit co-founder Scott Tilton told Forbes, who named Ronaldo the richest athlete on the planet last year. “He's been incredibly effective at integrating his sponsors into the content he shares with his over 240 million global followers.” That number has swelled in the past six months and Ronaldo is by far and away the most followed sports star in the world.
United, in turn, are incredibly bullish about their own social media presence. After getting their one billionth Facebook interaction, managing director Richard Arnold told a Web Summit in Lisbon last year:
" The level we are engaging at, to put it in context, is akin to religion. John Lennon was famously quoted as saying The Beatles were ‘bigger than Jesus’. Whilst we wouldn't want to be disrespectful in that way, what you are seeing from a measurement point of view is that the level of engagement and fervour we get is on par with the world's major religions and those are the only things at the same level as Manchester United in terms of that interaction and engagement." In conjunction with their social media assault, United’s highly evolved commercial operation has seen them set up a dense network of sponsors and partners in every corner of the globe – often to derision, but always to the benefit of the club’s bottom line. Harnessing this structure and uniting it with the global Ronaldo brand would create an unprecedented commercial operation. An event horizon in football monetisation.
Maybe you can't make back £175m - but who cares anyway? Football isn't just about money and the value of experiencing a few more seasons from one of the greatest players in history - maybe the greatest - has its own allure. If United have a chance of getting this deal done, they should.
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