Diogo Dalot has recounted a moment with Cristiano Ronaldo that left United supporters puzzling over timing and target. In a piece for The Players\u2019 Tribune Dalot wrote: “That season with Cristiano was when I really started to grow as a player and as a person. I lost count of the number of predictions he got right, because he knows so well what it takes to go to the top.<\/p>\n
“If anyone skipped a set in the gym, he would notice. We had a striker here who did really well for us in his first season, but Cristiano said, ‘He\u2019s not gonna make it here.’<\/p>\n
“I said, ‘Cris, he scored two goals today!’ He said, ‘Yeah, but he didn\u2019t have the fire to go for the third.'”<\/p>\n
Dalot\u2019s anecdote prompted a wave of fan investigation. Supporters returned to the 2021\u201322 campaign to see which player matched the description. The only United player besides Ronaldo to score a brace in that first campaign back was Bruno Fernandes, but Fernandes is an attacking midfielder, not a striker, and he remains at the club. The midfielder is entering his seventh season with the club and was crowned FWA and Premier League Player of the Season.<\/p>\n
That apparent mismatch has focused attention on the subsequent campaign. In 2022\u201323, before Ronaldo departed to join Al Nassr in December, both Anthony Martial and Marcus Rashford registered two goals within the opening months and later left the club. Martial\u2019s spell at Old Trafford included seven years, 79 goals in 269 appearances and five trophies, among them the 2016\u201317 Europa League. By the time Ronaldo returned, Martial had struggled for form, was loaned to Sevilla in 2021\u201322 and scored nine goals when he returned in 2022\u201323.<\/p>\n
Rashford\u2019s record stands at 138 goals in 426 appearances. He managed five goals in Ronaldo\u2019s first season back, recovered in 2022\u201323, but endured difficult subsequent seasons before moving first to Aston Villa and then to Barcelona on loan, the latter of which where he hopes to stay.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Dalot says Ronaldo told him a forward ‘is not gonna make it here’ at Old Trafford; timeline disputed<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":14220,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1083,1348],"tags":[992,342,1738],"class_list":["post-14221","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-man-utd","category-manchester-united-news","tag-anthony-martial","tag-bruno-fernandes","tag-cristiano-ronaldo-man-utd"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14221","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=14221"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14221\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/14220"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14221"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14221"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14221"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}