One year ago, Cristiano Ronaldo made the biggest mistake of his career - rejoining Manchester United

Exactly a year to this day, Manchester United announced the signing of legendary Portuguese footballer Cristiano Ronaldo for the second time.

Except this time he arrived as an accomplished veteran in 2021 in stark contrast to the fresh-faced unproven youngster who they snapped up from Sporting Lisbon in 2003.

The official unveiling was the perfect story, “Ronaldo is coming home” were the words on the Manchester United website and optimism at Old Trafford hit an all-time high but things could have worked out very differently.

To fully understand why Ronaldo’s emotional return to Manchester United was a mistake on his part, we have to do a bit of Marvel-esque time-travelling back to the summer of 2021 and play out another scenario.

A 36-year-old Cristiano Ronaldo had grown frustrated with Juventus’ inability to compete and was openly pining for a move to a team that could.

By virtue of that singular last statement, Manchester United would have been ruled out of the list of possible destinations were the Portuguese star thinking rationally and not emotionally at the time.

Although Manchester United finished second in the league season prior, they were 12 points adrift of champions Manchester City and in truth were on similar standing if not worse than Juventus at the time.

On the other hand, reports circulated that Manchester City (who were without a striker) were pondering Ronaldo as the solution, albeit reluctantly as he is not exactly Pep Guardiola’s cup of tea but the interest was there nonetheless.

The 36-year-old had just scored 36 goals in all competitions for a poor Juventus team and was available for cheap (not that money is a problem for Manchester City anyway) making him the perfect short-term fix, the only one even worth considering.

Manchester City never made an official bid for Ronaldo or even discussed personal terms, to the knowledge of the general public, they only made private inquiries into his availability to gauge his interest in the first place.

But the news of that activity was enough to get Sir Alex Ferguson and the powers that be at Manchester United to leverage personal relationships and emotions to contact the player very aggressively and publicly, leading to Manchester City pulling out of discussions.

From Ronaldo’s point of view, United was not a bad alternative at the time, the place where he is loved and adored, with a lucrative contract and Champions League football, it is likely he genuinely expected to be the difference between second and first for the club as did the rest of us.

But looking at it rationally even then, Ronaldo was passing up a sure thing for uncertainty, United looked good the season before he joined but City have been the undisputed best team in England since 2017.

Even in terms of actual football style, the Etihad was the better destination, in the blue side of Manchester, everything would not have to go through Ronaldo because they already have a system and the Portuguese supremo would only be burdened with finishing off the numerous chances they already create.

As opposed to Manchester United which would be heavily reliant on him at the ripe old age of 36 and boy did that prove to be true, Ronaldo ultimately turned down the perfect retirement home to do even more work in his latter years for little to no reward.

We all know how last season went for Manchester United, Ronaldo was comfortably the best player on a bad team which is not ideal for a now 37-year-old player.

Manchester City on the other hand were so good that they won the league without a striker with Riyad Mahrez finishing as their top scorer with 24 goals which makes one wonder how many more Ronaldo would have scored had he joined.

But even beyond last season, it is the events of this summer that rubberstamps Ronaldo’s return to Old Trafford as a mistake for all involved.

Ronaldo will look across Manchester and see 21-year-old Erling Haaland scoring for fun in the six-yard box and get praised for it while he is expected to do it all at 37 years old because in truth, expectations are a function of the system.

Perhaps Ronaldo would have scored 40 goals in all competitions for Manchester City last season and once again enter into Ballon d’Or conversations.

He may even have been the little extra City needed to break their Champions League barrier as lack of ruthless finishing ultimately led to them being knocked out by Real Madrid in the semi-final last season.

However likely it seems, we will unfortunately never know but what we do know is, Ronaldo has earned the right to be on a team where he is not required to work wonders week in week out, sort of like the other GOAT in Paris.