Former Manchester United star Cristiano Ronaldo has named Ruud van Nistelrooy as a potentially crucial figure in helping Erik ten Hag to rebuild the club amid their ongoing struggles.
Unless you’ve been living under a rock for the last decade, it’s become very clear now that Man Utd are a shadow of the force they were during the Sir Alex Ferguson era, with the Red Devils majorly going backwards since the legendary Scottish tactician’s retirement in 2013.
Ronaldo played under Ferguson in his first spell at United before returning to Old Trafford for a second spell in the summer of 2021, where he first played under Ole Gunnar Solskjaer.
Solskjaer was sacked that season, however, with Ralf Rangnick coming in as interim manager before current manager Ten Hag took over in the summer of 2022.
Ronaldo says Ten Hag needs to listen to Van Nistelrooy
Things didn’t go well for Ronaldo under Ten Hag, and he left the club shortly afterwards, and now he’s been quoted by Fabrizio Romano as discussing the issues at MUFC again.
See below as Ronaldo clearly feels Ten Hag needs to learn from his assistant Van Nistelrooy, who recently joined the coaching staff…
? Cristiano Ronaldo: “If Ten Hag listens to Ruud van Nistelrooy… maybe he can help”.
“He knows the club and the club should listen the guys who were there”.
“Rio, Roy Keane, Scholes, Gary Neville, Sir Alex Ferguson”.
“You cannot, you cannot rebuild a club without knowledge”. pic.twitter.com/qlSlwkLwwu
— Fabrizio Romano (@FabrizioRomano) September 11, 2024
It will be interesting to see if Van Nistelrooy can end up having a positive impact for United, though it seems Ronaldo also feels they would do well to call upon the wisdom of other club legends like Gary Neville, Rio Ferdinand and Roy Keane.
There may be some logic to this, though it’s also worth saying that United’s struggles continued when former player Solskjaer was in charge, with the Norwegian tactician seeming pretty obviously out of his depth in such a big job, which he surely wouldn’t have got if he hadn’t had that connection to the team from his playing days.
Perhaps Ronaldo is talking himself up for a future role as manager or director at Old Trafford…