Ronaldo shines solo, again

A Cristiano Ronaldo hat-trick is old news. It has now been repeated 58 times, since the Portuguese goal machine scored his first, like on Saturday night for Manchester United, in January 2008. What will be surprising is that it took Ronaldo until his fifth season with the Red Devils to score his first hat-trick.

PREMIUM

On Saturday, after the crisis-hit Manchester United had edged out a superior Tottenham Hotspur 3-2, with only one name on everyone’s lips, the thousands within Old Trafford and the millions around the globe, Ralf Rangnick, arguably the best known advocate of the team game—gegenpressing in his native German—stepped up to sum up his view of the game.

Rangnick is not given to drama, but he was desperately trying to play down the tumult within. He praised the team for responding after a shocking display against leaders Manchester City. The interim manager’s counter pressing has got nowhere, and a club with 13 Premier League titles has even made a rickety-not-long-ago Arsenal look like a purring engine.

That the Red Devils will at least temporarily hold the fourth spot in the table—ensuring a Champions League spot is crucial to the all-round health of the club—was a massive relief, but Rangnick had got confirmation of what he knew all along. If, even as only an interim manager, he is to finish the season with his reputation intact, Ronaldo will have to be his saviour.

Saturday night showed, yet again, why Ronaldo still is the brightest star of world football. An individual seizing a team game by the scruff of its neck, a work ethic that has at 37 not dimmed the hang in the air when he goes for a header, show in the leap and surety in the result. Rangnick may not find Ronaldo accepting of his footballing philosophy, but knows he is also a footballer who needs zero inspiration to produce the goods game after game. No wondering which Ronaldo will turn up, unlike Paul Pogba, Marcus Rashford or Bruno Fernandes.

“Since I arrived, that was Ronaldo’s best performance. Energetically he was good, part of the whole team when we had to defend. A top performance by him, but also the rest of the team. I didn’t expect him to score three goals, but I did expect him to score,” Rangnick told a TV interview after the game.

The build-up to the game had been all about Ronaldo flying home to Portugal reportedly after being dropped for the previous game. There were even reports of Ronaldo's discussions with his agent for an exit from Red Devils in the summer. In one sense, Rangnick was happy that Ronaldo answered for all on the pitch.

“He only resumed training on Thursday but his session was so good I decided to bring him from the start and not have him on the bench, and in the end it was the right decision. He didn’t train for a week and I wasn’t sure whether his hip flexor was good enough. He told me on Friday he was fully fit and could play, so that’s why he was in the starting XI. It is a challenge with a player like him but he has shown today he still has the quality to play for a club like Manchester United and he is also a part of the team. If we want to be successful at the end of the season, we can only do it together.”

If the German was wary of showering praise on the iconic player, French World Cup winner Pogba knew the value of that performance for the team in the final stages of the league. “There is no need to talk about Cristiano because that is what he does”, he grinned. “He comes back and scores three goals, and everybody is happy!”

Owen Hargreaves, Andy Cole and Tim Sherwood, TV pundits for the evening, analysed the first goal, an almost 25-yard shot that wickedly swerved away from Hugo Lloris and went in. They didn’t dwell about a technique that is honed every day. They simply concurred that his hip flexor was in working condition.

The second goal was a 35-yard dart into the box and tap in, after meeting Jadon Sancho’s flick on after a pass over the defence line. After captain Harry Maguire—the defender’s reported dressing room feud with Ronaldo is one of the spicy stories of the season—steered into his net for a second Spurs equaliser came the best goal of the night.

It showed why Ronaldo—beyond the comparisons, and debate that Manchester United have pinned hopes on an ageing player—is still a force on his own. The inspiration in Portugal’s rise in the football galaxy since early 2000s is also unique as a player who has won titles in three of the top leagues, stamping his authority be it his two terms with United, or Real Madrid and even Juventus.

It came in the 82nd minute, from a player welcomed with open arms under Ole Gunnar Solksjaer with an eye on his commercial value as well but made to deal with the carping that his waning powers gets in the way of football that, as Pep Guardiola and Juergen Klopp's teams have shown, is about running and pressing. As Alex Telles floats in the corner, Ronaldo shrugs off his first marker and aligns himself to meet the delivery in one motion, then leaps to subdue the big defender Matt Doherty by leaning into him as he powers in the header. The verdict from the pundits? Ronaldo’s hunger, and the bravery in the box, 19 years into top flight football, and in the most physical league in the world, is intact.

There was warmth in the embrace with Spurs manager Antonio Conte at the final whistle. Like that giggling, hand-in-the-mouth conversation with Karim Benzema after the once provider and finisher for Real Madrid had scored to keep Portugal and France tied 1-1 at half-time in last year’s Euro. The pundits were gushing on Saturday night, hoping the younger players in Manchester United would reach out to learn from Ronaldo’s training, skill practice and diet.

Officially, the hat-trick took Ronaldo to a tally of 807. FIFA does not keep an official record, but it estimates that Austro-Czech Josef Bican scored 805 goals in a career from 1931 to ‘55.

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