RONALDO PRESSING MATTERS:MANCHESTER CITY'S recently acquired financial muscle may have been enough to tempt Carlos Tevez to sign for United's cross-town rivals, but at Real Madrid's Carton House training base yesterday the Argentinean's former United team-mate Ronaldo gave short shrift to the suggestion he might ever have been tempted over to Eastlands.
“Never,” he said, with the certainty of a man whose pay cheques could scarcely be much more fun-sized. “City try to build a new thing, they buy a few good players . . . but it isn’t my problem, it’s a problem for Manchester (he doesn’t bother adding United), Chelsea and Arsenal.
“My league now is different. My job is to fight with Barcelona and Valencia. I don’t care what City do,” he concluded before being asked if Mark Hughes’ side can qualify for the Champions League next season. “Maybe, I don’t know,” he observed before adding after a pause: “I hope not.”
The English media, reinforced yesterday in anticipation of the 24-year-old’s presence, were tickled pink by this stuff, while the press pack the player has traded them for since moving to Real continue to obsess about his relationship with the multitude of other stars in the squad.
The Spaniards all throw in a personal, chirpy greeting before asking each player a question and Ronaldo reacted positively to each and every “Ola, Cristiano”, even looking at times as if he was enjoying the encounter.
There were a couple of jokes, a dutiful acknowledgment for the record of how hard it had been to leave Old Trafford and, after some obvious amusement when the translator kept forgetting which language she was supposed to be speaking in and simply started to repeat whatever had just been said, the sort of statement of intent his former boss Alex Ferguson would have appreciated. While some of his new team-mates have sought to play down the club’s ambitions for the year, the world’s most expensive player had no hesitation in setting the bar high.
“Madrid have bought some expensive players and we have to do good things. To win games, to win the league, we have to show the people that we came here to do something.
“I believe we are going to win the league,” he added when pressed about the weight of expectation on his shoulders. “But if we don’t the problem is not just me. I do not play alone. I play with 20 or 25 others.
“But still I’m focused on winning the league . . . and the Champions League, even if that is the hardest competition to win because all of the strongest teams want to win it. But we have to think about winning it. Why not? We have a great coach and great players.”
There was less confidence, as it happens, about whether he will make his debut against Shamrock Rovers on Monday – though the expectation is that he will – and a total blank when asked what he knows about the Dubliners: “I don’t know anything much, I don’t any of their players, I’m sorry.”
Ronaldo, or Cristiano, as he increasingly seems to be referred to (not least when asked about David Beckham’s time at Real, he announced, “Beckham is Beckham, Cristiano is Cristiano”), insists the players have sufficient respect for each other and their coach Manuel Pellegrini that all will accept the Chilean’s team selections over the coming months, but we shall see.
The tone of the questioning and significantly increased buzz around the hotel grounds yesterday certainly underlined the level of expectation the Portuguese star’s signing has generated and with Florentino Perez clearly cherishing his Galacticos, the former Villareal boss probably knows only too well he needs to keep Ronaldo smiling and Real winning if the length of his stay at the Bernabeu is to even match that of some of his recent predecessors.
Rovers on move again
Shamrock Rovers have been forced to move tomorrow’s league game against Sligo Rovers to Tolka Park after their landlords, South Dublin County Council, decided to close Tallaght stadium for the weekend in order to complete the preparations for the high-profile friendly against Real Madrid on Monday night.
The council first raised the possibility they would not allow the Sligo game to proceed last Friday and, despite efforts by both Rovers and FAI officials to ensure that the fixture went ahead as planned, the council subsequently confirmed that they would close the stadium on “health and safely” grounds.
Work on installing the 7,000 temporary seats required for the game was continuing yesterday with almost 3,000 reportedly still to go in as of yesterday morning.
The association expressed its disappointment in a statement yesterday and said it had only granted the permission required for the Madrid match to proceed on the understanding the league game would not be affected.
Rovers chairman Jonathan Roche said the Sligo game would always have been the club’s priority had it realised there would be a problem with playing both games over the three days. “If we’d known this, we wouldn’t have agreed to play Real Madrid,” said Roche.
