Chelsea boss Thomas Tuchel disagreed with Boehly on Cristiano Ronaldo after Rangnick chat
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Chelsea head coach Thomas Tuchel reportedly urged club owner Todd Boehly to cool his interest in Manchester United forward Cristiano Ronaldo after a chat with Ralf Rangnick. The former Red Devils interim boss didn’t give a glowing report of Ronaldo when Chelsea weighed up a move earlier this summer.
Chelsea were strongly linked with a pursuit of Ronaldo as Boehly aimed to make a splash in his first transfer window since leading a consortium to buy the club from Roman Abramovich. However, the Blues were one of a handful of linked suitors to rule out a deal for the wantaway 37-year-old.
According to The Times, Tuchel decided against advancing the club’s interest in Ronaldo on the advice of Rangnick, who managed the Portuguese icon last season. He is close friends with the Austria manager and went to him for pointers while Boehly planned to build his attack around Ronaldo.
The five-time Ballon d’Or winner informed United of his desire to leave for a Champions League club earlier this summer. But he has yet to receive a concrete offer, with Atletico Madrid and Bayern Munich among those distancing themselves from a blockbuster capture.
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United are back in the Europa League this season after slumping to a sixth-place Premier League finish with a record-low points tally under Rangnick. Ronaldo did his best to pull the Red Devils out of the dirt, scoring 24 goals, but it wasn’t enough.
Despite his impressive output, Ronaldo regularly garnered criticism for his negative effect on the high-intensity, pressing style Rangnick wanted to install at Old Trafford. And the 64-year-old’s recommendation to Tuchel comes as no surprise after he downplayed his ability to press at the end of last season.
In May, he said: “Cristiano Ronaldo, and I’m not blaming him at all, he did great in those games. But he’s not a pressing monster. He’s not a player, even when he was a young player, who was crying, shouting “hooray, the other team has got the ball, where can we win balls? The same with quite a few other players, so we had to make some compromises at one stage. Maybe we made a few too many – that’s also possible.”
Ronaldo is yet to return to prime condition after missing almost all of United’s pre-season preparations while Jorge Mendes scoured Europe for a potential exit. Sporting CP and Napoli are the latest linked, but with just five days of the transfer window left and the M16 giants insisting he isn’t for sale, Ronaldo currently looks set to stay.
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