Cristiano Ronaldo's 'cockiness' cost Man Utd team-mate and led to years of injury hell

Cristiano Ronaldo’s naivety once led to ex- player and manager suffering from ‘unbearable’ pain.

When a fresh-faced Ronaldo, his talent was clear, but his attitude, as would perhaps be expected of such a talented teenager, .

The Portuguese forward was nurtured into a superstar under Sir and has since – but he , near-perfect footballing specimen that many consider him to be now.

Solskjaer, who enjoyed an 11-year spell in Manchester and returned for a less successful managerial stint in 2018, has admitted that the Portuguese superstar once inadvertently caused him to suffer a traumatic knee injury that bothered him for years, and eventually led to him hanging up his boots.

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“We signed Cristiano. We could see that he was a massive talent and would become a superstar, but I was not going to step aside,” Solskjaer began, speaking in the new book Bring On United.

“I was stubborn, and my stubbornness killed me in one game against [August 2003, Old Trafford]. Cristiano was on the left. He played against Denis Irwin, then at Wolves.

“Cristiano didn’t get any change out of Denis, so he kept changing position to try and get away from him. Cristiano wasn’t tracking back as he should, so I ended up tracking his position and running more than I had done in any other game.

“I felt a sense of loyalty to the team. Towards the end, I was f****d. I should have asked to be subbed, but I thought, ‘this young cocky player is not going to be the reason that I ask to be subbed.’

“Scholesy played a ball in behind for me to run onto. I cut inside and stretched but felt my thighs and legs give in. I could feel my thigh bone and my knee. But I cut inside and shot with my left, missed the target and then jogged off to get changed.

“That was the moment when I first f****d my knee up. That was the start of three years of injury hell. All because I wasn’t prepared for Man United to lose a game because a young player was not tracking back.”

Solskjaer continued to kit out on the back of this injury but later admitted that, as the pain became too much, he came to terms with needing surgery.

“My knee had gone – cartilage. I didn’t want to miss games for Norway, so I tried to play. I came back, played for United against Panathinaikos and it was in that match, just before half-time, that the pain was unbearable,” he continued. “I had to come off.

“I woke up after the anaesthetic and knew that I’d not just been out for 45 minutes but for hours. I felt my knees and knew they’d operated on it. I carried on and recuperated for four months, then played again in the semi-final against at Villa Park [in 2004]. I played up front on my own and did well.”

However, the Norwegian would never truly recover from this issue. He would suffer from recurring injuries up until his retirement in 2007, which was likely premature due to such problems.

In a strange turn of events, the man who, it could be said, put an inadvertent end to Solskjaer’s career would return to the club to be managed by the Norwegian in 2021. The relationship between the pair would only become more dramatic as following Ronaldo’s explosive exit under Erik ten Hag, Solskjaer admitted that re-signing the star was a ‘mistake’.

Bring On United is available to order now in hardback version, ebook and audio following its release on November 7, 2024.