Ronaldo Man Utd exit: Huge secret revealed by club insider

Robin Bairner

• 25 Sept 2024 09:53 BST
• 3 min read

Cristiano Ronaldo’s departure from Manchester United was a victory for the philosophy of manager Erik ten Hag, according to Steve McClaren, who acted as the Dutchman’s right-hand man for a period at Old Trafford.

Ronaldo has been told that he failed to come up to Ten Hag’s standards while at Man Utd – and that his exit was the best thing for the club.

He was released by mutual consent in late 2022 and moved swiftly to Al-Nassr in the Saudi Pro League, where he has continued his career, yet the intrigue of his departure from Old Trafford continues.

“I couldn’t fault Ten Hag’s approach,” McClaren told The Telegraph. “He really handled it very well. I said at the time he was the right man to go in. That was shown in the way he handled Ronaldo.

“He came in with set standards. Set rules. Set way of playing. And if you didn’t run, you didn’t play. He was rigid on that. Which the Dutch are. He knew that was what was needed. There could be no flexibility, no way the players could manoeuvre.

“This is what you had to do – or you didn’t play. And he took on Ronaldo, and quite rightly. Other managers have tried to adapt. Erik didn’t feel it was necessary to do that. Ralf Rangnick had tried and it hadn’t quite worked out and Ole Gunnar Solskjaer the same. So Ten Hag stuck to his guns and developed other players.”

Ronaldo was ultimately released by Man Utd, officially by mutual consent, after the five-time Ballon d’Or winning striker gave an interview to Piers Morgan that was not approved by the club and criticised senior members of the Old Trafford backroom staff, including Ten Hag. The 39-year-old particularly claimed that he was not respected and said the club had failed to move on since he departed the first time around in 2009.

Ten Hag sticking to what he's good at

Ronaldo was the victim of one of Ten Hag’s “strengths”, according to the former England boss.

“That was the key thing. He was not afraid to throw youngsters in. On instances like lateness for meetings that was well documented, the Wolves one, when Marcus Rashford was a minute or two late for a meeting on game day. He Ten Hag put him on the bench. Granted he put him on and he scored the winner,” McClaren added.

“Things like that were important. Discipline was important. Standards were important. Behaviour was important. Everybody knows that about United. That’s what Ten Hag brought. Some people didn’t like that – that’s normal – but he never swayed from it. That’s his strength.”

Ten Hag has already survived numerous crisis moments at Man Utd and is now well into his third season at the club.