The ‘king’ is gone?
Cristiano Ronaldo wanted hype to surround his return to the pitch at Manchester United, so he took to social media to announce that he would feature against Rayo Vallecano in the team’s final pre-season match of the summer.
It was his first game back and nobody expected Ronaldo to play the entire game.
Erik ten Hag has explained over the summer that he wants his players to build their fitness over time. At the start of the tour, they played 45 minutes each, but he slowly increased that with each game.
Ronaldo will need to knuckle down over the coming weeks because it looks like Anthony Martial will be starting the first game of the season against Brighton next Sunday.
The 37-year-old was substituted at half-time and replaced by United’s goalscorer on the day, Amad Diallo, but the veteran star couldn’t stick around to watch the second half.
Ronaldo was pictured leaving Old Trafford before the full-time whistle, as seen below:
This stinks and I would be very surprised if Ten Hag tolerated this sort of behaviour — unless Ronaldo gave a good enough excuse for his premature exit.
Let us know in the comments section if you think Ronaldo will be at United next season?