Erik ten Hag forced Cristiano Ronaldo to blink first

The result of his let-it-all-burn interview with Piers Morgan is a sense of clarity, that his persona is anathema to United’s new identity

HEAD SCRATCHER: Cristiano Ronaldo, center, during a Portugal soccer team training in Oeiras, outside Lisbon. Pic: AP Photo/Armando Franca

Well, nobody saw that coming. Who could have known, who could have guessed that Cristiano Ronaldo was in fact a wildly solipsistic egomaniac? Were there, you wonder vaguely, some signs, some subtle hints along the way? Perhaps, in the end we never really knew him at all.

Looking back now it all started so well for Ronaldo. It started with the cakes. The cakes were massive. “I will tell you now, not one player touched the apple crumble and custard, not one player went up for that brownie because everybody was sat down and one of the lads said to me: ‘What has Cristiano got on his plate?’ The words of reserve goalkeeper Lee Grant after Ronaldo’s first sight of the players’ Friday night dessert trolley in August last year. And at least we know now what Ronaldo had on his plate, besides a large, sickly-sweet portion of Cristiano Ronaldo. The head of Ralf Rangnick for a start, and more recently the head of Erik ten Hag, judging by the tone of Ronaldo’s let-it-all-burn interview with the celebrity homunculus Piers Morgan.