HEAVEN! Crist starts with a bang
CRISTIANO RONALDO is so good he can turn back time.
That’s how it felt at Old Trafford as the second coming of one of Manchester United’s greatest stars threatened to send the club into meltdown.
More than a decade had passed since Ronaldo last wore the famous red shirt, terrorised defences at will and provided United with that gravitas the club’s reputation demands.
Those who remember that era recall a memorable period when Sir Alex Ferguson moulded this special talent into one of the world’s greatest ever players.
When he got the ball something extraordinary tended to happen, fans would get off their seats and United tended to win.
And nothing has changed, like one of United’s favourite sons had never left in the first place.
There he was on the stroke of halftime, popping up in the right place to punish some dreadful goalkeeping from Freddie Woodman and fire United ahead.
Had there been a roof on the stadium, it would have come off. It had to be Ronaldo, didn’t it?
Newcastle had the cheek to equalise in a brazen bid to ruin Ronaldo’s homecoming, but all this did was make the Portuguese even more determined to punish them for such an act of footballing treason.
And he did, helping himself to a second goal in the 62nd minute to put United ahead and in control again, having peeled into space on the left side of the box before drilling a powerful shot through the legs of Woodman.
Only Ronaldo could nutmeg a goalkeeper from 15 yards!
Cue delirium inside Old Trafford, which hosted the sort of noise rarely heard inside this famous old ground in recent times.
The great and the good had turned up to see Ronaldo and he hadn’t let them down.
There was an Oscar winner in the directors’ box in the shape of Gary Oldman, who sat close to Fergie, while even one of the Glazers flew in to see the show.
It was the first time since August 2019 one of the Americans had bothered to attend a game at the club which fills their pockets with so much cash.
Had co-owner Avram Glazer been at Old Trafford four months ago when fuming fans stormed the stadium and forced the game with Liverpool to be called off, he would have been lynched.
Now here he was joining in all the fun like nothing had happened, like his club’s bid to join a European Super League had been nothing but a bad dream.
That’s the Ronaldo effect, but he’s much more than a welcome distraction. He’s bigger than United itself because he continues to transcend his own sport.
There was just a different buzz about the place.
People had Ronaldo shirts, scarves, flags and masks and when he stepped off the team coach, mobile phones focused on just one man, before hundreds of flashlights went off like a scene from the red carpet in Hollywood. One building close to the stadium sported a huge poster of Ronaldo alongside Fergie with the words “a relationship to last”.
United executive vice-chairman Ed Woodward chose to leave his kids at home because he didn’t want to be distracted. He wanted to soak up each second of Ronaldo’s return to the club he never stopped loving.
He trotted out to a reception fit for a king and overjoyed fans in the Stretford End cheered when he scored goals in the warm-up. Even the sun came out.
It wasn’t all plain sailing, it has to be said.
In a comical reminder he’s human, Ronaldo could have scored with one of his first touches when Bruno Fernandes clipped a ball over the Newcastle defence, but he was in the wrong position and the ball bounced off his head at a hopeless angle.
He then tried an ambitious shot on the turn from an acute angle but scuffed his effort hopelessly wide before falling over.
Woodward must have been tempted to dig out his receipt for Ronaldo to see if he could take him back to Juventus and get a refund.
Then normal service resumed and Ronaldo proved his class again, adding two more goals to his career’s astonishing collection to complete the perfect script for someone most people believe is the perfect footballer.
He’s back – and English football is much richer for it.