Cristiano Ronaldo has been desperate to leave Manchester United all summer, but time is running out for the 37-year-old to find a new club.
With the transfer window set to close on Thursday, it appears the former Juventus star may have a way out, with reports linking him to a return to Serie A with Napoli. Jorge Mendes, Ronaldo’s agent, is also in talks with Sporting about a last-minute switch.
Ronaldo does not fit into Napoli’s system
Napoli boss Luciano Spalletti is the charismatic leader of his side and he has his players disciplined in his formation to precise tactical details. There are fears that trying to shoehorn a similar figure like Ronaldo into the side could provide an imbalance.
The team plays by heart and the presence of Cristiano Ronaldo would destabilize the 11 men on the pitch and Spalletti’s 4-2-3-1 formation would suffer a decline in terms of speed and dynamism.
Ronaldo is not an ordinary player and for this reason, he must be protected by the manager even in training. As Ronaldo’s former Juve boss Max Allegri argued, he is a company that walks on two legs and for this reason has a very selfish approach to the world of football and the events of the team in which he plays.
His way of playing does not include the defensive work others do and this would be detrimental to the balance of Spalletti’s team which has always wanted to orchestrate the attack and defense phase even with the participation of the most advanced players on the pitch.
However, Italian football is slower than what is played in the Premier League and Ronaldo would be even more effective than he has seen in the last 12 months spent in Manchester, scoring 24 goals in 39 games.
Ronaldo is a heritage of football and around him, a perfect organization is needed that perhaps Napoli, as a club, does not have.
The Khvicha Kvaratskhelia problem
The arrival of Ronaldo would also create many problems in the tactical management of the team because if Victor Osimhen were to remain, considering the purchase of Antony by the Red Devils, it would be difficult to find a place for Khvicha Kvaratskhelia.
The Georgian 21-year-old star has three goals from as many matches and has impressed as a left winger.
This problem is technical as well as tactical but also financial because ‘Kvara’ represents an economic asset to be preserved in case of a future sale.
Arriving in the summer for £8.5m (€10m) his price has already tripled and within 12 months he could become a new global star.
Napoli owner Aurelio De Laurentiis has always defined players over the age of 32 as old but the purchase of Ronaldo would be a great economic business that would guarantee Napoli to pay nothing, or only a small part, of his high salary received at Manchester United.
This solution is intriguing and very speculative but it would risk the development of Kvaratskhelia at the Maradona Stadium.
Another Totti situation for Spalletti?
The quarrels between Roma’s former No 10 and Spalletti are so infamous that they inspired a film about Totti’s life and his troubled relationship with the Tuscan coach who tried to limit his talent while respecting the balance of the team.
Spalletti is an intelligent and very conversational coach who is always keen to put his team first beyond any player.
With Cristiano Ronaldo, the situation would be completely different because the remaining 10 players on the pitch, including the goalkeeper, would have to live 90 minutes obsessed with feeding the Portuguese forward. Now the feeling is that Ronaldo is not the icing on the cake but a Portuguese dessert too alcoholic to keep the whole team sober.
If Spalletti decided to leave Ronaldo on the bench all the cameras and the eyes of the fans would be ready to immortalize the grimaces of the forward, as happened recently in Manchester.
Delays in training or difficulties in communicating with the team would also have a great sounding board to trigger a media hurricane in every game. Luciano Spalletti is currently the best Italian coach and the extraordinary work done in the last 90 days proves it having kept the club stable following key departures.
Would Ronaldo make way on set-pieces?
Juventus’s free-kick crisis arose when Ronaldo arrived at the Allianz Stadium.
Ronaldo has taken numerous free kicks during his Serie A career but in 99 percent of cases, his shots never went to goal. Dusan Vlahovic’s free-kick for Juve against Roma was their first since the Portuguese star’s last goal against Torino in 2020.
This egotism could create a lot of discontent in other players who usually want to go for a goal from a distance or the penalty spot. Ronaldo would become a more useful character to promote record takings in a De Laurentiis film but he would hardly be able to create harmony in a team with a well-defined philosophy where until now selfishness has never existed.
Ronaldo’s drama is that he still thinks he is the player of 10 years ago but in reality, he is a rather eccentric stunt double who cannot accept the passing of time.
Can Napoli sign Ronaldo without selling Osimhen?
This is the most recurring question in Naples because Manchester United, after paying £84m (€100m) for Antony, has no intention of spending another £84m for forwarding Victor Osimhen.
Without a swap the negotiation is possible but it is very difficult because it has some gaps both at an economic and a tactical level.
Osimhen, Ronaldo, Raspadori, Simeone, Lozano, and Kvara would be too many and Spalletti would suffer too much pressure in managing the line-up. Osimhen dreams of becoming the top scorer and if he stayed to play with Ronaldo there would be a constant quarrel over scoring opportunities such as penalty kicks.
It is difficult to imagine peaceful competition, while it is difficult to imagine having Ronaldo stopped in attack with 10 players who have to run for him.
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