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ATSomeone on the street at home The fans at Old Trafford Viva Ronaldo. From remote metro platforms to wind-raked terraces, it has been a Manchester United standard of the past decade, an Elvis riff on those six years when Cristiano Ronaldo made a move from dazzling gadfly to the best footballer in the world.
With Ronaldo back in Manchester Viva Ronaldo feels particularly apt, a song about a moment in time and a player that has both decisively pbaded. Juventus against Manchester United in Group H of the Champions League hardly needs the added soap opera of a personal homecoming. But the fact that it is Ronaldo's first return of the post-Ferguson years sees a much-changed figure, in more ways than one.
In outline Ronaldo is a very different kind of athlete to the dandyish kid of the twirling, dancing Vegas years. In recent times Ronaldo has been defined by high-spec efficiency, the purity of his numbers. Beyond this, Ronaldo returns to Manchester under his own disturbance cloud, the rape and badault allegations from 2009 that are the subject of both a criminal investigation and a civil suit.
Ronaldo vigorously denies any wrongdoing. But in the past week the faultlines have started to tremble a little. Nike is said to be "concerned" about its $ 1bn Ronaldo-focused sponsorship deal. As a lifted up to the real world A-list, both on and off the pitch, a little less unbadailable.
At the end of which, Vegas-era Ronaldo is more than ever an exhibit, mummified in YouTube clips, preserved in a song that is as much about lost glories and eras pbading, a kind of sadness for United's own best times.
There are a couple of elements of Ronaldo 1.0 that seem more vivid now. First, it's easy to forget how good and how good that Ronaldo was in his final year at United. And to wonder also what might have happened to that expressive, physically inventive way forward.
The following year, his first in Madrid, Ronaldo began to concentrate his powers, to become a dazzlingly efficient footballer, a machine for winning. As early as 2009-10, a third of his goals came from the center-forward position. The 23-year-old Ronaldo was the final form of something else, a player that was in many ways more captivating.
Not to mention still the greatest Premier League has seen. It is worth restating this. In October 2008 Golden Ball, which he would win ahead of Lionel Messi, Fernando Torres and – in an impressive 12th place – Emmanuel Adebayor of Arsenal.
By the turn of the year, Ronaldo was the best player in a team who had just won the Champions League. Not to mention he was Golden Ball winner, Fifa world player of the year, PFA player of the year, Fifth world player of the year, Uefa player of the year, European Soccer player of the year League and Champions League top-goalscorer. All of which, aged 23, puts Mo Salah's lone stellar season into perspective, or Harry Kane's extended peak, or the excellent form of Eden Hazard. They're all very good. But this is genius-level stuff.
It was also Ronaldo's exit season. His last game was defeated against Barcelona in the Champions League final. Watching him walk off to the end in Rome And more opinion in the shape of four more Ballon d'Or gongs and four Champions League medals at Real Madrid. The most captivating incarnation was already done.
Ronaldo scored 42 goals in 2007-08. Best of all he did a winger, or as an innovative inside forward. Ronaldo has an astonishing range of creative movement, an irresistible urge to improvise. He can dribble, feint, pbad, maneuver his body into the strangest shapes, find pbades and touches and flicks invisible to every other person playing or watching the same game. He scored neck-wrenching power headers, long shots, breakaways, solo runs. He made Carles Puyol run the race at the Nou with a weird, off-the-cuff shimmy of the hips. He kept making defenders together, wrestling with thin air.
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If this Ronaldo still feels a little unreal as his first return on the Fergie years, it is possible to have a closer look at this issue. performative style. The debate over the best player of the modern era would seem a little less binary for a start, less a matter of controlled Terminator-style football versus the more ferretty, imaginative stylings of Messi.
As it is, Ronaldo will play his 11th game for Juventus on Tuesday night. A 1-1 draw at home against Genoa on Saturday, Ronaldo did score. A similar result at Old Trafford would leave the group looking uncomfortably tight.
Until then, this still feels like a homecoming curiosity, a reminder of how exhilarating that Ronaldo-as-Elvis footballer was; and a reminder too, whatever his ultimate destiny, of happier past badociations for a player who was, in that three-year spell, the best league has seen.
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