The greatest thing that happened to Ronaldo in his first stint at Man United will always be what happened after the 2006 World Cup. That’s the most Ronaldo thing ever.
The whole English media was against him. 19 away grounds booing him, because of the Rooney red-card incident. There was even a genuine feeling that he might not want to return to England.
Imagine being 21 years old, coming back into a country where you have suddenly become public enemy number one, knowing that almost every away ground is going to be hostile to you.
That moment would have broken so many young players.
But Ronaldo came back and did the exact opposite.
He turned all that hatred into fuel.
In 2006/07, he scored 17 Premier League goals in 34 games, helped Manchester United win their first league title in four years, and then won both the PFA Players’ Player of the Year and PFA Young Player of the Year. He also won the FWA Footballer of the Year.
He didn’t just survive the backlash. He became the best player in the league while dealing with it.
That season was the psychological turning point. Before the World Cup, Ronaldo was a talented winger who could dribble past anybody but was still inconsistent, still learning how to dominate games. After the World Cup, something changed.
He became obsessed with proving people wrong.
Then look at what happened immediately after.
2006/07 — 17 league goals, Premier League title, PFA Player of the Year.
2007/08 — 31 Premier League goals, Golden Boot, Premier League title, Champions League, Champions League top scorer, PFA Player of the Year again, and eventually the Ballon d’Or. He went from just 18 league goals combined in his first three seasons to 66 in the next three.
That is not a normal development.
The boy who came back to England as the most hated footballer in the country became, within two years, the best footballer in the world.
The mentality? That was built at Manchester United.
2006 was when Ronaldo learned that pressure, criticism, hatred and humiliation could actually become fuel. From that point, whenever people told him he couldn’t do something, his natural response was to become obsessed with doing exactly that.
That is probably the most important part of Ronaldo’s story.
He didn’t just develop his football.
He developed an ability to respond.
And honestly, that is where the Ronaldo we eventually came to know was born.
The Greatest of all time.