“You’re finished, right?” Cristiano Ronaldo was asking the question that has been asked about him. Perhaps both answers came in the negative. Tom Brady, with whom he was speaking on the Old Trafford pitch, promptly unretired. Ronaldo had already made reports of his own demise look distinctly premature with his extraordinary display against Tottenham.
It was a throwback performance, transporting himself back to his best, from a footballer who can look a long way back; when Teddy Sheringham became the previous 37-year-old to score a Premier League hat-trick, for Portsmouth in 2003, Ronaldo was already a Manchester United player. He has spanned eras. He faced a team managed by Sir Bobby Robson and one with David Seaman in goal. He has played in a side with Anthony Elanga, who was four months old when he made his Sporting Lisbon debut.
He has outlasted most and outscored everyone: indeed, he became the most prolific player in footballing history in both 2021 and 2022, depending on which of Josef Bican’s goals are counted. The sense is that the numbers and the records form part of the motivation for Ronaldo. But so does the sense of proving everyone wrong.
Perhaps Ralf Rangnick provided the motivation on Saturday. Maybe Ronaldo would not have started the Manchester derby until a hip flexor injury and a trip to Portugal provided alternative arrangements. Maybe, however, he was simply raging against the dying of the light.
In a floundering side, with a solitary goal in his previous 10 games, with the enduring debate if he is problem or solution, he suggested that charismatic, narcissistic brilliance and the spectacular finishing that is the product of a devotion to self-improvement can compensate for other deficiencies, for the limited mobility, for the lack of pressing, for displacing United’s younger attackers in a way that seems to have benefited none of them.
A raging Ronaldo looked the force of old, but the light is dying. When he faces Atletico Madrid on Tuesday, it may be for the last time. That may be a relief for Atletico, who have conceded 25 times to him, one in the 2014 Champions League final, plus the decisive spot kick in the 2016 final.
He could be on his way to emulating Alessandro Costacurta and Paolo Maldini, the only players to win the European Cup in three different decades. He could yet equal Paco Gento’s record of six European Cups which, he would need no reminding, would put him two clear of Lionel Messi, who, he definitely will be aware, will not add to his tally in 2022. Or, more probably, he could be playing his final game in the competition: a new manager at Old Trafford may want to go in a different direction. United might not be in the competition next season, anyway.
If so, it would end an epic career, after 183 Champions League games and 140 goals; both, inevitably, records. In reality, Ronaldo has not got close to winning the competition since leaving Real Madrid in 2018. He is unlikely to again. And yet, whether with the chiselled physique or goals that have echoes of the 2000s – there was a hint of his thunderbolt against Porto in his first against Tottenham – he is trying to be timeless.
He seems intent on extending his career into his forties; in part, perhaps, to take his unparalleled tally of international goals somewhere up towards 150 and out of reach of future generations of men. Perhaps, 807 goals into his career, he thinks he can reach 1,000.
But the broader picture is of a downturn. He is in a worse team, scoring fewer goals, staring into uncertainty. Ronaldo may be the greatest ever Champions League player but he could become a stranger to the competition soon. Or he could shape more matches to suit his own narrative, writing his own history again. “Another GOAT,” he captioned a picture with a different kind of footballing icon on Saturday and in a sense Tom Brady is more a peer than Robbie Brady. All time, however, is not the same as the present and the immediate future as Ronaldo tries to fight off the sense he could soon be consigned to the past.
But Saturday at Old Trafford offers an intriguing comparison: the manager United could have hired against the one they did. And it presents a vision of an alternative United, one coached, coaxed and criticised by Conte. It is safe to assume they would not have had an ill-advised flirtation with 4-2-2-2 under him.
If it is tempting to wonder how Conte’s United might have looked, his recent jobs offer some guide. It feels almost certain he would have fielded a back three. The greatest beneficiary may have been a struggler this season: Harry Maguire, who could have occupied the role on the left that he has filled so well for England. Conte is not averse to a deep defence, as he showed at the Etihad Stadium when Tottenham won there, and that might have suited Maguire. If he would have been faced with the problem that the outstanding choice to operate as the middle centre-back, Raphael Varane, is often injured, it would have been intriguing if Aaron Wan-Bissaka, whose attacking deficiencies have been all too apparent at Old Trafford, had been reinvented as the right-sided centre-back.
The midfield would have presented Conte with two reunions: Nemanja Matic from his Chelsea days and Paul Pogba, whose best club form came for Juventus. While Conte has spent much of his time in the Premier League playing 3-4-3, his Scudetti with Juventus and Internazionale came when he deployed a 3-5-2 formation more often. That might have felt his logical shape at Old Trafford, allowing Pogba to reprise the left-sided No. 8 role he filled so well in Turin, with Bruno Fernandes presumably his right-sided counterpart, charged with imitating Inter’s Nicolo Barella. That, in turn, would leave a choice between Scott McTominay and Fred, two staples of Rangnickball. Conte’s January move for Rodrigo Bentancur at Tottenham showed how he can want a better passer at the base of the midfield.
Conte’s recent feat of reviving the careers of Ryan Sessegnon and Matt Doherty is a reminder he can be a byword for wing-backs. If Luke Shaw and Alex Telles are each equipped to fill that role on the left, his more maverick streak is sometimes shown on the right. He tried to sign Adama Traore to play there: he famously reinvented winger Victor Moses as a wing-back. Perhaps, then, would Jadon Sancho or Jesse Lingard have been tasked with becoming a one-man right flank?
In attack, Conte has a fondness for strike partnerships and a habit of making centre-forwards prolific. United, in contrast, have only scored more than one goal in five games under Rangnick. Cristiano Ronaldo only has three goals for him. If Conte’s mantra of work, work and more work, much like Rangnick’s status as the godfather of gegenpressing, prompted questions about what he would do with an immobile attacker, and the Italian’s lack of diplomacy may have meant he was less willingness to compromise, he could have brought issues to a head. Given Marcus Rashford’s current struggles, it would be instructive if Conte had rejuvenated him.
Certainly his attention to detail and positional nous has helped many another. Equally, his impatience is soon apparent. Given how quick he was exile Dele Alli, Tanguy Ndombele, Giovani Lo Celso and Bryan Gil, the presumption is that he would have ushered some United players to the exits in January; the questions instead would have been who and how many. And given his fixation with transfers, he would have set about remodelling the team in his style, whereas Rangnick signed no one. As Tottenham bid for Luis Diaz, perhaps he would instead have figured on an Old Trafford shopping list.
What can be said is that Conte’s United would have been very different. They are scarcely a classic Rangnick team now. They might instead have been some way on the potentially bumpy journey to becoming a Conte side.
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