Cristiano Ronaldo: the star player not quite ready for retirement

Football fans may be hard, even brutal, in their criticism of players, sometimes even in criticism of their own teams. The obverse is that as hero-worshippers they are often sentimental: hence the roof-lifting reception that awaits Cristiano Ronaldo when he runs out in the red jersey on his return to Old Trafford. He may not, at thirty-six, be quite the player he was and has lost some speed, but he has been scoring goals for Juventus and Portugal, two, both from headers, for his country in a World Cup qualifier this week, and it will be surprising if he doesn’t do so for United this season.

There has been come carping criticism in the press; “not the player United need now,” for instance. Others have asked, more pertinently, where this leaves the club’s brilliant young striker, Mason Greenwood, home-reared, not yet twenty and scoring goals for, as they say, fun. He was only seven when Ronaldo’s first spell at United ended, so it’s pretty reasonable to think he represents the future while Ronaldo recalls a glorious past.

It’s not quite so simple. Indeed, I would suggest that Ronaldo’s return leaves Greenwood just where he was. There are thirty-eight Premier League matches. Then there are European Cup games, FA cup games and what used to be called League Cup games. A top Premiership club will play at least fifty games in a successful season, perhaps even sixty.

A young striker like Greenwood is unlikely to feature in much more than half of them. Sometimes he will start and play for sixty or seventy minutes; sometimes, he will come on as an impact sub; sometimes, he will be rested, and sometimes he will be injured. The truth surely is that a big club needs to have a squad of twenty-five or thirty genuine first-team players to win trophies. There’s room for both Greenwood and Ronaldo and indeed for Marcus Rashford and Anthony Martial as well.

Of course, Ronaldo is not as quick as he was. Few athletes are in the second half of their thirties. But, even setting aside the fact that speed of mind – that is, the ability to read the play to be in the right place at the right time – is as important as speed of foot. The development of sports science means that careers in many sports last longer than was usually the case in the past. 

Ronaldo is only a year or so older than Novak Djokovic and the same age as Rafa Nadal. Rugby is a more physically demanding sport than football, but Alun Wyn Jones, aged thirty- six, captained the Lions in South Africa this summer. Ireland’s Johnny Sexton is still his country’s first-choice fly-half at the same age as Ronaldo, with his sights fixed on the next World Cup to be staged in France in the autumn of 2123. One might remark that Stanley Matthews was still playing for Stike in the old First Division of the Football League at the age of fifty. Ronaldo has a long way to go to match that.

Then, on the cricket field, James Anderson remains one of the best bowlers in the world in his fortieth year, and nobody can say that bowling fast or fast-medium isn’t physically – and indeed mentally – demanding. The Prince of Australian fast bowlers, Ray Lindwall, was thirty-eight when he played his last Test.

Come-backs can be sad affairs when a player is suddenly seen to be well past his best. I remember an afternoon at Murrayfield in 1981 when the great J P R Williams, star of Wales’s glory years and two Lions tours, returned after being out of international rugby for a year or two and had a miserable match, being tormented by John Rutherford’s accurate kicking.

Others will recall such occasions. One, for instance, when Tony O’Reilly was surprisingly summoned to play for Ireland at Twickenham, years after his great feats for the Lions in South Africa and New Zealand, and, out of practice and overweight, looked horribly out-of-place. On such occasions, the old adage “form is temporary, class is permanent” looks sadly silly.

But Ronaldo isn’t making a come-back, and he hasn’t been dragged from retirement. He is still a star and a prolific goal-scorer. The star may not shine quite as brightly as it did, but still brighter than most. There’s no reason why he shouldn’t shine at Old Trafford again – and no reason why his return should check young Greenwood’s bright progress.

Who knows? United may even win the League again, for the first time since the Ferguson glory years.