Returning Man United superstar Ronalso did not disappoint on his second debut for United as he nets twice to down Newcastle… before Bruno Fernandes and forgotten man Jesse Lingard get in on the act to fire Red Devils top of the Premier League
The first half was coming to a close when time lurched backwards at Old Trafford. Mason Greenwood, the teenage forward who is a superstar in the making, cut in from the right and drilled a left-footed shot towards the Newcastle United goal. It took a slight deflection and spilled from the hands of Freddie Woodman as he tried to gather it. And as the ball rolled loose, a figure lurked.
Cristiano Ronaldo took a step forward. Woodman tried to recover his ground but Ronaldo knew he would not get there. He was three yards out. He has probably never scored an easier goal, even in his magnificent career. He moved towards the ball and caressed it into the empty net and United were ahead. And United were top of the league.
Ronaldo looked across to the touchline to check that the linesman was not going to raise his flag. He did not. And then he strode across to the fans in the lower tier of the stand and did that theatrical jump that is his trademark celebration, leaping into the air and turning in mid-flight and then planting his feet on the turf. It has always seemed like a celebration and a preening ritual rolled into one.
And so there was a new king in town. Same as the old king. And in that moment, it became evident again that when United signed Ronaldo from Juventus to seal his second coming at Old Trafford, they did not just buy one of the greatest football players the world has ever seen. They managed an even more clever trick than that. They bought the past.
That is why there was quite such an outpouring of fervour about Ronaldo’s return to Manchester 12 years after he left for Real Madrid to conquer Europe and establish himself as the only true rival to the rule of Lionel Messi. Ronaldo represents something that United lost. He represents a time when they were kings. And now they have brought the pride back.
When he walked out at Old Trafford on Saturday at the back of the line-up to make his second debut for United more than 18 years after his first, he was there to win a game against ordinary opposition but he was also there to act as a salve for all the years of hurt and mediocrity that have followed the retirement of Sir Alex Ferguson.
The last time Ronaldo wore these colours, United were only a year removed from winning the Champions League against Chelsea in Moscow. They still had a few league titles left in them. They had not yet been overwhelmed by the hegemony of Manchester City and Liverpool. But the years since 2013 have been all about loss. Ronaldo has been brought back to banish loss.
There is a famous line in the film Apocalypse Now about the Vietnam war where an American commander, Colonel Kilgore, orders a napalm strike and enthuses about it afterwards. ‘Napalm, son,’ he says. ‘Nothing else in the world smells like that. I love the smell of napalm in the morning…Smelled like…victory.’
And that’s the thing with Ronaldo. He smells like victory. He always has. He is the closest thing to certainty in football. He always has been. Messi is easier on the eye and the darling of aesthetes everywhere but if you want certainty, if you want the job done, Ronaldo is the man. He has become the personification of victory.
And even if he is 36 now and even if there will be more difficult opponents than Newcastle and goalkeepers who have better days than poor Freddie Woodman did on Saturday, Ronaldo has lost neither his sense of occasion nor his instinct for goal. Not content with his tap-in on the stroke of half-time, he stepped up again when Newcastle had the impudence to equalise.
The visitors’ goal came eleven minutes after the interval when Miguel Almiron turned beautifully away from his marker deep in his own half and hurtled forwards. He squared the ball for Allan Saint-Maximin, who pushed it into the path of the overlapping Javier Manquillo and Manquillo lashed it past David de Gea.