In the famous musical “The Sound of Music”, there is a scene at the very beginning when the church nuns sing about Mary, the main character played by Julie Andrews.”How to solve a problem like Maria?”, they ask.When she’s at her best, Maria is great, Maria entertains you, Maria is charming. But, at the same time, she is too unpredictable, she exuberates much more than such a serious institution can handle. She is both a cuddly lamb and a devil, an angel and a headache, all in all – one big puzzle.Eventually one of the nuns gets to the point: “Mary does not benefit our abbey.”If this text was written only five years ago, with the same thesis – “How to solve a problem like Cristiano Ronaldo?” – his subject matter would be completely different. Solving this problem meant painstaking tactical outwitting with one of the two best footballers of the 21st century, with the constant danger that even that equation does not necessarily bring good results, because Ronaldo can be something more than the sum of his own (substantial) qualities.Erik ten Hag has revealed he is yet to speak to Cristiano Ronaldo since he asked to leave Manchester United but reiterated the club’s stance that he is not for sale.More from @lauriewhitwell https://t.co/P4WoLLlMoY pic.twitter.com/XSpdGisTsv— The Athletic UK (@TheAthleticUK) July 11, 2022 But today, in front of Manchester United and their new coach Erik ten Hag, as well as in front of all the clubs that have been mentioned as a potential destination these days – and there are not many of them, which also says a lot about the Portuguese – stands another puzzle and headache, the summer musical “The Sound of Siuuu”.Perhaps the only shock after the verified information that Cristiano Ronaldo wants to go somewhere where he will play in the Champions League and fight for trophies, was that no one was shocked anymore.A little because of the size of his ego, a little because the clubs have long since lost the main place at the poker table and left the bluffing to the footballers and their managers, and a little more because of what Manchester United have become in the last ten years, which, it turns out, has reached its peak last summer, when Cristiano “came home”.Italian journalists, always much more eloquent than all their colleagues from other meridians – it’s a tradition of writing about football that often borders on investigative journalism on the one hand and fiction on the other – summed it up in one sentence, back in those Juventus years: “Ronaldo is a great solution to the problems that Ronaldo himself brings.”The English, focused on results, say it differently these days: “Today’s Cristiano is a goal ahead even before the game starts… but a player less throughout the game.”Or: “His presence in the Manchester United team has created a problem that his absence from the Manchester United team will only make worse.”##NAJAVA_MECA_6495564##United do not have a striker – either they ‘ran away’, regardless of whether they would somehow get out of Ronaldo’s shadow, or they do not score goals, or they were arrested by the boys in blue, not only the opposing defenders – so the departure of the man who led them last season with his goals held on this side of the ropes acted as a heavy blow.Then again, it doesn’t seem like Erik ten Hag would shed too many tears, especially since it came at an ideal moment: if we’re turning over a new leaf – he could and probably would say from the top of the South Tower, the tallest building in Manchester and the surrounding area, then ‘we turn it all the way’.(After all, Man City didn’t have a classic striker either, but there they are, champions again?)Manchester United, after years without a trophy and – even worse – years without hope, do not represent, nor can they represent, an environment with unbearable pressure, and the Dutchman will be able to sculpt a ‘new Ajax’, in which even the greatest football geniuses, such as Dušan Tadić, renounce the large font on the jersey or poster.And that Ajax, as much as Tadić embodied it, had only one real authority – Ajax the club.Luis Figo talking about Cristiano Ronaldo. pic.twitter.com/Bsid8fJFmZ— Frank Khalid (@FrankKhalidUK) July 10, 2022 Without Ronaldo, ten Hag not only gets a team that will listen to him even when he says “Boys, we’re pressing”, but also a dressing room where he can be the loudest or at least the most influential, and not worry that his biggest star will quite publicly call out his most expensive defender and accuse him of not being a worthy captain.The season is fast approaching and the tour of the Far East and Australia is already here: if Ten Hag likes a harmonious system, and all the Dutch coaches do, then he is not too crazy about a scenario where United play for twenty days and then Ronaldo comes in and steals the ball from the kids (and takes it home and punctures it, because he can…)Perhaps it would be the right remedy for United, the club that brought Ronaldo last year primarily because it was good PR, and only to thwart their town rivals, as they were able to do in the past.It was a question of emotion, a question of style, a question of tradition, a question of marketing, and least of all a question of goals and performance on the pitch (which, looking at the statistical columns, is not disputed).None of this has to be interpreted – and it really isn’t – as a condemnation of Cristiano Ronaldo. What’s more: that a man at the age of 38 wants to win so much, and at the same time often knows how to win himself, that is what makes him exceptional.This is what Ronaldo will be remembered for many years after this drama is over, in which everyone is careful not to use the word “betrayal”. This is what made us respect him and fear him at the same time.Cristiano Ronaldo is aging like a fine wine 🍷🐐 pic.twitter.com/C4nzoro5si— IconicCR7 ™ (@IconicCR7_) July 10, 2022 But if anyone knows what brand power is, it’s Manchester United, the first club to successfully brand themselves in this new football; in some stock market there is a scale where it is easy to measure whose is bigger (brand, of course), and it is a game where there is no room for hard feelings.However a question remains: which abbey, and under what excuse – and Thomas Tuchel, for example, would have to stand in front of a mirror and find a very strong excuse to justify and keep the ambition of the new owners of Chelsea quiet – will think this summer that they can solve a problem like Cristiano Ronaldo?
