Steve McClaren, who worked as Erik ten Hag\u2019s assistant at Manchester United, has offered a clear account of how the manager\u2019s strict demands over Cristiano Ronaldo\u2019s role contributed to the forward\u2019s acrimonious exit from Old Trafford in 2022.<\/p>\n
McClaren described frequent confrontations on the training ground as Ten Hag insisted on a defined pressing duty for Ronaldo. “There was a lot of battles on that training field,” McClaren told The Good, The Bad and The Football . “There was a lot of, \u2018All I want you to do is this, this, this and this.\u2019 That was Erik\u2019s coaching: \u2018Ronnie, this is your job.’<\/p>\n
“I used to say to Ronnie, \u2018All [Ten Hag] wants you to do is … you\u2019re the first press, make one run, make two runs, and maybe make a third one, if you feel like it. And then, recover back into the middle, in case we win the ball, and then we can play to you. That\u2019s all he wants you to do. If you can\u2019t do that, you won\u2019t be playing. Or if you won\u2019t do that, you can\u2019t be playing, or he won\u2019t pick you. I\u2019m telling you, he won\u2019t pick you.’<\/p>\n
“I think other people would [have picked Ronaldo], and that\u2019s the difference, other people would. But Erik was, \u2018No, I\u2019m doing that, and [Ronaldo] has got to do it, otherwise he doesn\u2019t play.’<\/p>\n
“It was a little bit of a fight\u2014not a fight, but a standoff, and who is going to win? Erik stuck to his guns. I think most managers would accommodate to that. Some managers are like that. But he stuck to his guns.”<\/p>\n
Striker coach Benni McCarthy, who left Old Trafford in 2024 and is now the manager of Kenya, echoed the view that a tactical mismatch was central to the breakdown. He told Zero Zero: “I think Manchester United wasted a great opportunity to use Cristiano in the right way,” and added, “It wasn\u2019t easy because Cristiano is a huge character. He has his own personality, his own maturity, and he wants a coach who understands him too. At a certain point, it\u2019s true, things started not working out between them.”<\/p>\n
McClaren and McCarthy\u2019s accounts point to a sustained tactical disagreement over pressing and role definition as a key factor in Ronaldo\u2019s 2022 departure from Manchester United.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
McClaren and McCarthy recount how Ten Hag\u2019s pressing instructions for Ronaldo precipitated the 2022.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":6911,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[179,969],"tags":[1305,1304,1087],"class_list":["post-6912","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-manchester-united","category-premier-league","tag-bench-selection","tag-benching","tag-coaching-change"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6912","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=6912"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6912\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/6911"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6912"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6912"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6912"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}