Is Ron’s Real Deal Dead?

By: Wayne Farry | May 21st, 2009

If we look back to a summer ago, we’ll remember a crutch-ed Cristiano Ronaldo walking around in short shorts and fluttering his silky eyebrows at Real Madrid. Every opportunity he got to say something, he’d drop a little hint about his future. He’d say it was “his dream” to play for Madrid and even before he got injured he said:

“I like a white kit. The white kit of the national team that is.”

“Cheeky little bastard,” were my exact words when I saw him say that. I couldn’t believe he’d disrespect us so much as to flaunt his wares to Madrid like some hooker on the street corner. After the season he’d had in 2007/08 I thought he’d want to stay forever. But as last summer wore on it looked increasingly likely that the tanned maestro would be going, especially as rumours of a pre-contract deal with Real surfaced. But thankfully, after some talks with Sir Alex (and by ‘talks’ I mean possibly the biggest, most terrifying hairdryer treatment ever administered) he decided that this was the place for him, for now anyway.

So, after a fairly good season (twenty six goals in fifty two games is mighty impressive) and the summer approaching it’s surprising to see that there aren’t near as many Ronaldo-Real rumours being banded about. The main reason for this is that incoming President of Real (I know the elections are yet to take place but it’s a foregone conclusion that Perez will get it) Florentino Perez has other targets in mind, apparently seeing Kaka and Franck Ribery as more viable targets. This has been substantiated by many reports. Some have said that while Real and Ronaldo had a deal in place, there was no deal with Man Utd, and now that Perez is coming back he’s looking to cancel that deal with Ronaldo. If that were to happen I can’t imagine Ronaldo would look too kindly upon it. At least I hope he doesn’t, because as soon as they’re turned down for Kaka or Ribery they’ll be trying to get Ron again, most likely. Hopefully though, he’ll remain loyal for a few more seasons at least. Even if he were to move in four years he’d still only be twenty eight. And it doesn’t seem like he intends leaving any time soon.

As recently as this week, Ronaldo himself has come out with some strong enough statements, giving his clearest indication in a long time that this is where he sees his future:

“At the moment I’m only thinking about the (Champions League) Final independently of what will happen to me or my team-mates next season.

“I’m sure Perez would create an incredible team at Madrid but at the moment I’m at United and I don’t care about what happens there. I only care about what will happen next season at Manchester United.”

Okay, so not remarkably strong words, but the fact that he’s come out and said this is a good thing in itself. So, it looks, maybe that he’s here for the long haul. Perhaps he’s waiting for the right time to move? Perhaps he’s realised he’s better off at a club where he knows who the manager is going to be after the weekend, perhaps he realised that for all the sun in Madrid, they couldn’t buy a Champions League trophy if they tried to, or perhaps he just realised that he’s at the best club in the world, and any other move would be a lowering of his self-set high standards.