Should he stay or should he go?

Regardless of his heroics last season for Manchester United, Ronaldo is systematically burning his bridges and must almost certainly move

There is a fantastic story doing the rounds this morning about Cristiano Ronaldo, luridly telling of his crutch-born excesses in an LA nightclub. Even accepting and discounting the undoubted tabloid exaggeration of the story, it is telling that a man who is supposedly on recovery from an operation is knocking back glasses of red wine and vodka in nightclubs.

It has been a helter-skelter few weeks for the Portuguese star, as the "will-he won’t-he" whisperings about his move became more solid as he actively flirted with the Spanish club and as the shy and retiring Calderon at Madrid repeatedly threw fuel on the fire with perfectly timed comments to the media. It would seem that Ronaldo has made his mind up, and has set his heart on a move to the Spanish capital.

The first point here is that, as a Manchester United fan, it was always inevitable. Ronaldo is, more than most footballers, a mercenary, a man whose primary motivation is greed and getting whatever he wants. When you watched him throwing stepovers over the ball or thrashing in another goal, it was always with the niggling feeling that it was fleeting, ephemeral in some way. He has always cast admiring glances toward Spain, and we should not really be all that shocked by his want-away attitude.

One might argue that Ronaldo has accomplished everything in England, and ascended to Europe’s peak, and so might relish a further challenge. Furthermore, you might point out that it is his right to work where he wants, and if it is for more money then even better. However, it has to be said that Ronaldo owes Manchester United a lot, for taking him as a callow, painfully raw teenager and moulding him into a ferociously talented footballer.

It seems as if the adulation of the fans, which is now predictably beginning to turn sour, means nothing to him, and now his head has been turned I can not see it being turned back again. It is also an interesting side note that rainy, grey Manchester does not sit with the Mediterranean blood of Ronaldo, and this will always be a problem for continental footballers hoping to ply their trade on our rainy isle, at least until global warming sees palm trees sprouting around the M62.

Ronaldo, for me, has to go now. For the ridiculous sums being touted around, United should take the money and spend it wisely. Any cursory viewing of Euro 2008 unearthed any number of gems, and for Ronaldo’s money you could snap up number one target Berbatov, with enough loose change for a van der Vaart or a Ribery.

He has burned his bridges now and it would be churlish to keep him sitting in the stands, regardless of the belligerent tone of Ferguson and the Manchester United board, the latter of whom, I suspect, would never let an asset such as Ronaldo stew in the stands when their debt payments loom so large.

There was Manchester United before Ronaldo and there will certainly be United after him, and therefore we should mourn the passing from our shores of one of the most talented players of the current generation. However, we should not mourn the passing of the world’s biggest ego, one that rode roughshod over anyone that stood in the way of his ‘dream’ of playing in Madrid.

For me, this is a step to the side or even down, from the team at the top of the tree in Europe which exudes stability, to a club that is often ridiculed for the soap-opera regularity of drama and one of the fastest managerial merry-go-rounds in the world. A self-important team and a wholeheartedly selfish, though outrageously talented, footballer; it would seem Madrid and Ronaldo are a match made in heaven.