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Was Young Cristiano Ronaldo ACTUALLY A MIDFIELDER?
When Cristiano Ronaldo exploded onto the scene in 2004, he was far from the player we know today. He was a scrawny 18 year old with blond highlights dancing around defenders at a superhuman level. He had a level of electricity that is maybe found once in a decade… but that was about all to this game. He was in no way the most complete player of all time that we saw a decade later, resulting in his goal tally being practically nonexistent… but there’s potentially another reason behind this. For the past couple of years the matter of whether young Cristiano Ronaldo was a midfielder has been a topic of debate. It’s been an excuse Ronaldo fans have pleaded whenever his goal ratio has been compared to Lionel Messi’s, but is there any actual truth to this?
Now Ronaldo broke into Sporting’s 1st team at 17 years of age 100% due to his dribbling. He contributed just a total of 5 goals in the entirety of the 02/03 season, but this version of him was not designed to be a goalscorer. In sporting’s tactics, he played either out left or out right, in a 4-2-3-1 where his job was to get to the byline and cross to Jardel who was the poacher. Of his 5 goals, one was a header off of a set piece, one was a solo-goal, one was from outside the box, and one was a cross that ended up finding the back of the net. Not goals we typically see from Cristiano Ronaldo. Now, unlike the modern day where everyone knows everything about wonderkids from all over the world in 2003, a young Portuguese winger who wasn’t even a full-time starter wasn’t going to be known by many players or fans. But that all changed when Manchester United agreed to a friendly against Sporting as part of their pursuit to sign Ronaldo. As Mikael Silvestre put it, “At the start, no one had even heard of Ronaldo, but by the end, everyone knew about him”. As a left winger, he would terrorize the entirety of Manchester United’s backline. “This kid had everything. He had speed. He had vision. He had unbelievable skill. He left our defenders in the dust. He tormented Fabien. He performed astonishing tricks with the ball, then shrugged, as if to say, ‘Oh, that’s nothing.’” Sporting would win 3-1, but that hardly mattered. The entirety of Manchester United was fixated on this kid… And just a week later, United would wrap up the transfer, beating out Barcelona and Arsenal agreeing with Sporting a record fee for the teenager.
Now Sir Alex Ferguson’s Manchester United played either a traditional 4-4-2 or a 4-5-1 with Van Nistelrooy as a lone striker, or van Nistlerooy and Solskjaer or Forlan in a strike partnership. In this tactical approach, Cristiano Ronaldo was signed to replace David Beckham as the right winger, but not quite the “winger” we think of today, such as Vinicius Jr. or Bukayo saka. To start, he was a right footed right winger, which in the modern era has gone borderline extinct because quite simply, deploying wingers on the opposite flank to their dominant foot is just more effective in 95% of modern tactics. Secondly, these wide players were classified and played much more in the midfield line rather than in the forward line. Think of Pavel Nedved, Luis Figo, or the player he replaced, David Beckham. They all won the ballon d’or, or in Beckham’s case finished second, despite scoring 14, 14, and 8 respectively. Ronaldo, who wouldn’t quite win the ballon d’or that year, would still make it into the UEFA TOTY, despite scoring 6 goals. All of them were so-called “traditional wingers” or “wide midfielders”, who played quite deep where their job was to move the ball from the midfield third into the final third… or, in the final third, beat their man to the byline and cross it in, rather than cutting in and taking a shot themselves. With that being said, don’t think that Ronaldo was Toni Kroos or Xavi. He was never that central midfielder who could orchestrate the game, he played out wide. What made Ronaldo so great, and the reason he was in TOTY was of course his electrifying dribbling… the reason he was signed. He averaged 4.41 dribbles per 90, which if we placed that season into the 22/23 Premier League, it would earn him a very comfortable #1 spot among qualified players.
So yes, Cristiano played as a wide right midfielder in his first 2 professional seasons, and he would continue to play there in 04/05 and 05/06, where his goal tally would slightly increase, but not too anywhere near elite levels. Well he was still an absolute show averaging 4.43 dribbles per game in those 2 seasons, almost as much as prime Messi (4.73), he would start receiving criticism for his lack of end product, and his lack of good decision making in and around the box. He would over dribble there, and when he didn’t do that, his shots went all over the place and his crosses were inaccurate. The media labeled him a “one trick pony”