Erik ten Hag says Cristiano Ronaldo was walking around Carrington telling his team-mates to coast through sessions.
“He was telling the players, ‘Save your legs at the training’,” the Dutchman told The Athletic in an interview reported on Tuesday.
It is the single most damaging line in Ten Hag’s first long account of what went wrong between him and the Portugal captain, and it lands four years after Ronaldo last pulled on a United shirt. Ten Hag is now technical director at Dutch club Twente and has decided it is time to put his version on the record.
A Portugal meeting that set the terms
The breakdown, Ten Hag says, was not for lack of a plan. Before he took the job in the summer of 2022 he flew to Portugal to meet Ronaldo and explain what he wanted.
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“I flew out to Portugal to speak with him about what I was aiming for before I came to United,” Ten Hag told beIN Sports.
Ten Hag framed the meeting as a pact that Ronaldo then broke.
“He let the team down, and he let me down, because we planned with him.”
Ten Hag said he raised the running directly with the player.
“I confronted him with this. Many times I say, ‘Ronnie, everyone wants to work for you to bring you in the right position, but if you can’t bring yourself in the box, you can’t score’.”
“He ran neither in possession nor out of possession. The reason was because he didn’t prepare himself.”
The two laps at Carrington
The specific flashpoint, Ten Hag said, came after Manchester United’s 4-0 defeat at Brentford on 13 August 2022, a result that left the side bottom of the Premier League with no points from two games.
The squad, Ten Hag claims, was put through a three-lap fitness circuit at the training ground the next day. Ronaldo stopped after two.
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Ten Hag has also alleged Ronaldo pulled out of other sessions.
The manager has gone out of his way to say the issue was not Ronaldo’s ability.
“Obviously, he’s one of the best in football history. I respected him a lot.”
“But at that time, as a manager, I had to make a rational decision and keep the players I admire in.”
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“Every top team has to embrace the top player, but the top player has to work for the team.”
Four years on, still at Al-Nassr
Ronaldo left Old Trafford by mutual consent in November 2022 after an explosive television interview with Piers Morgan in which he said he had “no respect” for Ten Hag and felt the club had betrayed him. He joined Saudi Pro League side Al-Nassr weeks later and is still there, now 41. The Portugal captain has given no public response to Ten Hag’s latest claims.
Ten Hag’s United tenure ended in October 2024. A short spell at Bayer Leverkusen the following summer was cut after three matches, and he moved into the technical director role at Twente, where he now oversees football operations.
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