Ronaldo evokes Cantona memories

THE goals may have been shared by others at Old Trafford on Saturday but few doubted whose name truly deserved to be branded onto the match’s memory; and on Monday, his penalty ensured that his almost-repeat stellar performance would be properly formalised by the scorecard-keepers.

Yes, Ronaldo’s timing is exquisite in every aspect.

For as the briefing wars over his contract situation reached fever pitch in the weekend press, he truly showed us just what’s at stake on both Saturday and Monday.

Could even the rumoured €70 million of Real’s filthy lucre buy sufficient replacement for such a seemingly perennial match-winning talent? We doubt it.

Incidentally, it was no surprise that the Sunday People’s remarkable story, to which I referred last week, that Ronnie would be “putting pen to paper” on a United extension before the Bolton match duly proved to be rubbish.

More mystifyingly, The Sun claimed before kick-off that Real had “withdrawn their interest”, which would certainly have surprised all Madrileno readers of Marca who, merely two days earlier, had been digesting a four-page special spread on the Bernabeu’s “Ronaldo Project”.

Meanwhile The Guardian, in support of its sister paper The Observer, was spinning a directly contradictory tale the very next day.

It’s been like this all week. You do wonder how much longer this absurdity can go on before some journalist has his keyboard hurled out of the O.T. press box by an irate fan — and yet many hacks complain to me of the disrespect they are held in by readers!

Here’s an idea: the chap who wrote that People story (Andy Dunn) should be forced to pen a public apology and be banned from writing about United for, say, two months. After all, such are the kinds of penances demanded by hacks of footballers when the latter misbehave on the pitch. Three such offences and you get relegated to horoscope sub-editing. We can but dream.

I, naturally, would never make any such egregious errors. (Cough cough). In fact, surveying the glorious position we are in today, I begin to wonder whether my main misjudgement this season was to put my money on just a PL/CL Double, when the odds against a Treble are now shortening every day.

Indeed, hovering temptingly into view is the notion of a May triple-header with our would-be nemesis Chelsea, the club who have vulgarly decreed themselves to be our new global challengers for the next decade. It is quite conceivable, given our respective semi-final opponents in the FA Cup and surveying a European quarters field which is the weakest in memory, that we could face the Blues in three trophy ‘Finals’ within the space of a few May days for all three prizes. Can you imagine the screeching hype this would engender? — but deservedly so, for it would surely be unprecedented in football history.

That said, Fergie and I would be in rare agreement in that neither of us would actually WANT a Chelsea final in the European Cup, though. For me, Europe is about beating proper foreigners, and consequently all-Anglo ties feel like a swizz.

Whereas Fergie, rather transparently, has stated a preference for Liverpool in the final, presumably knowing full well that recent history shows we would have a much better chance of beating them than Chelsea.

Am I getting ahead of myself here? Maybe so: the overall underpar performance on Monday night demonstrated that the Bolton win did not definitively prove we are through our recent ‘stutter’.

Yet the Ronaldo Effect can dazzle so brightly as to impair one’s judgmental view. Watching him drag us to victories through improvisational brilliance week in and week out, building up for United what appears to be an irresistible momentum, reminds me of Cantona’s impact in the late winter and spring of 1995/96.

We weren’t really playing that well overall, yet he was enough to still make us feel almost invincible. And to think people were still calling Ronaldo a product-free show-pony well into 2006.

They should go work for the Sunday People.

* By Richard Kurt, whose “Red Army Years” will be republished in May.