Ferguson, Alex - Alex Ferguson My Autobiography

Whiteside and Moses tried to impress on Gascoigne that he had just made a serious error of judgment. A little re-education was in order. But Gascoigne just skipped all round them.

We tried our best to sign him that summer. But Newcastle sold him to Tottenham instead. When you have that experience, of seeing this talent right before your eyes, you know you’re experiencing one of those moments you search for every hour in management. And that sense of discovery rushed me into trying to tie up a deal for Gascoigne that very day.

With Ronaldo, in contrast, Kenyon did manage to complete the deal. I sensed that Sporting might have been happy not to have sold him to a Spanish club. The deal was concluded quite swiftly, with add-ons that took it up to about £12 million, with the sole condition that, should we ever sell him, Sporting would have the option of taking him back. A couple of days before we sold him to Real Madrid, we had to tell Sporting that they could have him back, but it would cost them £80 million. Not surprisingly, no cheque was forthcoming.

As Cristiano started his new life in Cheshire, his mother and sister came with him. That was good. His mother was very protective, as you would expect, and was a good, straight-talking woman, with no airs or graces. She was highly maternal. I explained to Ronaldo that Lyn and Barry Moorhouse would look after them with things for the house, bank accounts and so on. We got them some dwellings, tucked away, near Alderley Edge, and they settled in quickly.

We had returned from America, after the Sporting Lisbon game, in a plane belonging to the Dallas Cowboys, who had rented it to us for the summer. Ferdinand, Giggs, Scholes and Neville enthused about Ronaldo all the way home: ‘Get him signed, get him signed.’

So Ronaldo came into the training ground knowing that our players knew all about him and had a sense of how good he was. I think that helped.

His first appearance was against Bolton at home on 16 August 2003, where he started on the bench. The Bolton defenders ended up in knots. The right-back rattled him straight away in the centre of the park, took the ball off him, but Cristiano got straight back up and demanded another pass. Right away. ‘He’s got the balls, anyway,’ I thought.

The next minute he was pulled down and won a penalty. Van Nistelrooy missed it. Then, of his own volition, Ronaldo moved out to the right-hand side and hit two superb crosses in. One was met by Scholes, who passed to Van Nistelrooy; his shot was parried by the keeper and Giggs tapped the ball in for the second goal. The crowd on that side of the ground responded as if a Messiah had materialised right before their eyes. The Old Trafford crowd build up heroes quickly. They see someone who gets their rears off seats and take to them right away. Ronaldo had the biggest impact on Manchester United fans of any player since Eric Cantona. He could never have matched the idolatry that came with Cantona, because Eric had all this defiant charisma, but his talent was instantly apparent.

The goal Ronaldo scored on the break in the Champions League semi-final at Arsenal in 2009 confirmed his majesty as a counter-attacker. The ball moved from Park to Rooney to Ronaldo with devastating speed. I always said to him: ‘When you’re going through on goal, lengthen your stride.’ By lengthening your stride you slow yourself down and your timing is enhanced. When you’re still sprinting, you have less coordination in your body, but when you slow your mechanics down you give the brain a better chance. He did that. You watch him.

In the spring before the 2004 FA Cup final in Cardiff, where we beat Millwall 3–0, Walter Smith, who had joined me as assistant manager in March, asked me about the various talent levels of all our players.

‘What about Ronaldo,’ he said, ‘is he that good?’

I told him: ‘Oh yes, unbelievable. Even in the air. He’s a magnificent header of the ball.’

Later, Walter said, tentatively: ‘You keep telling me this Ronaldo is a magnificent header of the ball. I see him heading the ball in training but never in a game.’

That Saturday, against Birmingham, Ronaldo scored with a superb header. I turned to Walter. ‘I know, I know,’ he said.

I had watched Millwall beat Sunderland in the semi-final and told my staff: ‘That Tim Cahill’s not bad, you know.’ Good leap for a little lad. No great talent on the ball, but he was a constant nuisance. A pest. You could have bought him then for a million. He would have scored a lot of goals in a good team. Dennis Wise was especially combative in that match. But there have been plenty of nasty little players like him down the years, the sort who prompt you to think: ‘I wish to Christ I was still playing.’ There will be plenty who would have said that about Dennis Wise. He would never have survived in the old days, I’m certain of that.

If you’re cute enough in the modern game, you can get away with a kind of underhand physicality. Wise would be good at leaving his foot in, arriving a fraction late. He played his game well. In the modern game it is hard to pick out genuinely thuggish players: those who step out to cause hurt. It hardly mattered, because Ronaldo destroyed Millwall that day.

The one political drama we had with Ronaldo was, of course, the 2006 World Cup, when he winked at the Portugal bench after Wayne Rooney had stamped on Ricardo Carvalho. This raised the brief possibility that the two men would fall out to such an extent that they would never be able to play together again. What saved the day for Ronaldo was Rooney, who was terrific. On holiday, I texted Rooney and asked him to call me. He suggested the two of them granting an interview together to show there was no bad blood.

The next day I ran it past Mick Phelan, who thought it might look a bit prompted and artificial. I decided he was right. But the generosity of Rooney was what impressed Ronaldo, who thought it might be impossible for him to go back to Manchester. He felt he had burned his boats and that the press would kill him. Rooney called him a couple of times to reassure him. It wasn’t the first time two United team-mates had clashed in the international arena. I’ll take you back to Scotland v. England in 1965, and Nobby Stiles’ first game for his country. Denis Law is standing in the Scotland line and Nobby shuffles over to him and says, ‘All the best, Denis.’ Nobby idolised Denis, who says, ‘Eff off, you English so-and-so, you.’ So Nobby is left there, stunned.

Yes, Ronaldo did run to the referee to help get Rooney in trouble, which is common in the modern game. But Ronaldo was thinking only of one thing – winning that game for his country. He wasn’t thinking about playing for Man United the following season. That was a World Cup game. And he did regret it. When we visited him it was clear he understood the implications. The wink was misinterpreted. The manager had told him to stay out of trouble, so the wink was not to convey pleasure to the bench at his own role in Rooney’s sending-off. I believed him when he told me he was not saying, with that gesture: ‘I sorted him out, I got him sent off.’

We met at a villa in Portugal and had lunch. Jorge Mendes was present. Rooney calling him had helped to change Ronaldo’s mind and put him at ease. I told Cristiano, ‘You’re one of the bravest players to come to Manchester United, but walking away isn’t courage.’ I quoted the Beckham situation in 1998: ‘It was exactly the same as this. They were hanging effigies of him outside pubs in London. He was the devil incarnate. But he had the balls to fight it.’

Beckham’s first game after that incident had been against West Ham – the worst possible place to go after such a drama with England – and he was terrific. ‘You’ve got to get through it,’ I told Ronaldo. The next game in London for Ronaldo was at Charlton on a Wednesday night. To begin with I watched from the directors’ box, where there was a local guy screaming unbelievable abuse: ‘You Portuguese bastard’ was one of the politer epithets. Five minutes before half-time, Ronaldo received the ball, danced round about four players and hit the underside of the bar with a shot. That guy didn’t rise from his seat again. It deflated him. Perhaps he thought that his screaming had motivated him.