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Originally Posted by Brother
I can't agree with you re Ronaldo...and that's from a born and bred United fan. Yep ...great dribbler, strong and athletic, knows where the goal is. But I think his dead ball skills are piss poor and reckon the stats would back me up there. Beckham, for instance, kicked his ass at free kicks and there's been plenty of other more sublime dead ball merchants over the years who'd hit the target far more often than Ronnie. Ronnie has all the tricks but Giggs was a better dribbler in his prime. Ronaldo did what he did week in week out against the shabby defences of the vast majority of Premiership teams but his record against other top 4 teams was poor and he often went missing in our big euro games. Quality defenders sussed him. Ultimately his greatness weakness has been his selfishness...his unwillingness to play for the good of his team rather than just himself and his belief that he is bigger than the club that he plays for. I predict a slow slide into relative obscurity amongst the galacticos at RM and that he will never again reach the heights of his 42 goal season at United.
I wanted him gone last year and am delighted at the ridiculous money we got for him. And in my opinion there's a player at OT who is far far nearer to being the "perfect player" than Ronaldo. He got shoved out of position onto the wing to accomodate Ronaldo but put up with it and now United can and should build their team around him. Wayne Rooney has the ability to be the greatest player to come out of England...as strong as an ox, can dribble, can pass with both feet, can head the ball, can tackle...you name it. And Rooney loves the game so much he'd probably play for nothing just to get a kickabout...the last of the street footballers. Look at what he's been doing for England. He's a future captain of both United and his country imo and is central to both teams chances of silverware in the future.
Other than that I wholeheartedly agree with everything you posted  ) |
Well, I can see your point on a number of those things but disagree on others. I think that there's a lot of hype around Ronaldo (not helped by my last post, admittedly) and i do think there's been better players - Zidane, Maradona, etc) but in the context of the modern game as it is now, I don't know. If we just take Man U players, Giggs
was a better dribbler, Beckham
was better at free kicks but these are all was-es. I'll admit that right now Rooney
definitely has a better footballing brain but as a complete package I just think that Ronaldo pretty much has it all at the moment.I honestly can't see him fading into obscurity when he plays for Real either. If anything, the increased space that players get in la Liga will allow him to flourish in a way that he arguably wasn't able to in the Prem. I actually think that man U this last season weren't that great a team and that their struggles against the other top four teams was more down to that than anything else.
It's a good call on Rooney potentially being the greatest footballer England has ever produced. It's hard to compare him with players like Moore, Matthews, Greaves, Bobby Charlton and Duncan Edwards, simply because they came from completely different eras. In the 'modern' era though, he'd be up against names like Shearer, Gascoigne, Gerrard and possibly Bryan Robson. I think Rooney could very easily come to eclipse those as players, if he hasn't already.