Erik ten Hag has described the episode with Cristiano Ronaldo as part of the past after a turbulent two-and-a-half-year reign at Manchester United. Speaking as the new boss of Bayer Leverkusen, Ten Hag emphasised that Ronaldo was not the underlying issue during his time at Old Trafford.<\/p>\n
Ronaldo rejoined United in 2021 and left after 15 months to join Al Nassr, criticising both the club and Ten Hag on his exit. Ten Hag himself was sacked in Oct. 2024 amid the Red Devils\u2019 ongoing struggles, which continued after Ronaldo\u2019s departure. He addressed the matter following Bayer Leverkusen\u2019s 2\u20130 defeat to Chelsea in a pre-season friendly.<\/p>\n
\u201cFor me [Ronaldo\u2019s] no problem. He was never the problem and I think that\u2019s the past,\u201d Ten Hag said. He added: \u201cI think it was what happened. It\u2019s the past and after that, we won two trophies at Manchester United. I wish him all the best for the for the future and I wish him the best of luck.\u201d<\/p>\n
Those two trophies, the Carabao Cup and the FA Cup, arrived after Ronaldo\u2019s exit but were not enough to save Ten Hag\u2019s job. Manchester United appointed Ruben Amorim as his replacement, yet the club failed to improve and finished 15th in the Premier League last season.<\/p>\n
Ten Hag sought to draw a line under that chapter. \u201cIt\u2019s not about Manchester United, that is closed,\u201d he said. \u201cI\u2019m looking forward and I\u2019m really happy to be back [in work]. I\u2019m really enjoying the last couple of weeks.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe have a good club [Leverkusen]. We have a good team and we will improve.\u201d<\/p>\n
Ronaldo continues to feature for Portugal and Al Nassr as he pursues the milestone of becoming the first male player to reach 1,000 career goals. The Real Madrid legend scored 27 times in his second stint at Old Trafford but said he felt \u201cbetrayed\u201d by the club after the fallout with Ten Hag. \u201cI don\u2019t have respect for [Ten Hag] because he doesn\u2019t show respect for me,\u201d Ronaldo said back in 2022. He has not responded to Ten Hag\u2019s most recent comments.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Ten Hag: “Ronaldo was never the problem” as he closes the Manchester United chapter and future now.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1435,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[179],"tags":[452,684,180],"class_list":["post-1436","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-manchester-united","tag-cristiano-ronaldo","tag-erik-ten-hag","tag-player-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1436","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=1436"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1436\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1437,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1436\/revisions\/1437"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1435"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1436"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1436"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1436"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}