- Ex-Manchester United coach recalls Erik ten Hag reign
- Delves into Dutchman’s spat with Cristiano Ronaldo
- The damning Piers Morgan interview
Former Manchester United coach Steve McClaren has revealed what happened between Erik ten Hag and Cristiano Ronaldo during their time together at the club.
Ronaldo initially joined United as a spotty-faced youngster in 2004, arriving with talent seldom seen on a football pitch. With the work rate of ten horses, Sir Alex Ferguson slowly ironed out the inconsistencies in his game, developing him into a pacey, electric, and stunningly graceful winger, who quickly became one of the greatest players in the world.
The Portuguese icon would depart Manchester for 13 years, returning in 2022 to a completely different landscape. Whilst there were fine moments on his return, it quickly turned ugly, as a tether between club and player snapped, fracturing relationships.
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McClaren: Ronaldo Didn’t Want to do the Job
Joining from Derby to replace Brian Kidd as Ferguson’s assistant manager, McClaren enjoyed a two-and-a-bit-year spell between 1999 and 2001, where he won a myriad of trophies, including the heralded 1999 treble.
Returning 21 years later, it was Ten Hag he assisted rather than the legendary Scot. When he joined the Dutchman’s backroom staff in the summer of 2022, tensions were already visible, and a fracture began to form within the club.
McClaren recalled the tense situation in an interview with The Athletic‘s Laurie Whitwell:
“Erik tried to impose his style and that’s why he had that fight with Ronaldo all the way through. I said to Erik, very early, ‘It’s you or him.”
McClaren added:
“Ronaldo was generally OK. But he didn’t want to do the job that Erik wanted him to do. Or didn’t feel he was capable of doing it. The instructions out of possession were, ‘Get into the middle, as soon as you’re back, you’re the first press, then double run, even a triple run now and again’.”
The former England manager delved into his approach:
““I used to say to Ronnie, ‘If you want to play, that’s what you’ve got to do’. He’d argue, ‘Ah, nobody wants to press’. I’d say, ‘Well, they’re all young lads, they can press’.”
Ronaldo was handed a bit-part role under Ten Hag, and it did not go down well with the Portugal captain. It appears that he refused to listen to his manager:
“It’s right that 11 players attack, 11 players defend. Not 11 players attack, 10 players defend. So I said, ‘You have to run, it’s simple, Ronnie. If you don’t, you don’t play’. Maybe other managers have tried to adapt and accommodate to get the best out of him. The balance of that was significant. You’ve probably got half the squad going, ‘We think Ronnie’s right’, and half going, ‘We think Erik is right’.”
Ronaldo often calls Ferguson his father figure in football and he was definitely kept in line by the fiery Scotsman. McClaren continued:
“Well, with Fergie, he was right or you were out. If you weren’t with him and he knew it, you were gone. And that’s the authority, the power that he had developed over years and years.”
McClaren compared the control Ferguson had with that of Ten Hag:
“Now, the problems we had with Erik at the beginning, Fergie had exactly the same. He used to tell me stories about fighting all the drinkers. Fergie said, ‘I fought them every day, Steve’. I told him, ‘I’d have loved to have been your assistant at that time’. I don’t think I’d have survived, but I’d have loved it. The characters.”
He added:
“The Gaffer, Sir Alex, got time to do it. Erik didn’t get the same time. In a way, I could believe it. But in some respects, I couldn’t, because he won the Carabao Cup and the FA Cup.”
Ronaldo remains one of the most beloved club legends despite the difficulties of his second spell at Old Trafford. Under Ten Hag, he made 16 appearances across competitions, posting three goals and two assists.
Piers Morgan interview
After starting just three of the 16 Premier League games of the 2022/23 season, Ronaldo had had enough. On November 14, Ronaldo joined British journalist Piers Morgan on TalkTV to talk about how United “betrayed him.”
He also dug into Ten Hag, stating:
“To be honest, it’s something that I don’t understand. The new coaches that are coming around, they think they’ve found the last Coca-Cola in the desert. I don’t understand. I respect any coach that has a different approach or different mentality, but there are some points where you don’t agree. I’ve always been like that in my life.”
The Portuguese star went on to claim that the United hierarchy was trying to “force [him] out” and that “I don’t have respect for him [ten Hag] because he doesn’t show respect for me. If you don’t have respect for me, I’m never gonna have respect for you.”
This came after Ronaldo had headed down the Old Trafford tunnel after being snubbed by Ten Hag in a 2-0 win over Tottenham Hotspur. He released a statement apologising for his actions but then appeared on Morgan’s talk show and ultimately caused the mutual termination of his contract in late November.
It was a devastating ending to one of football’s biggest romances of the 21st century, but sadly, more romances end up like Romeo and Juliet rather than The Tempest.
