Bruno Fernandes is probably feeling what Ole Gunnar Solskjaer did at Man Utd, and this World Cup is proving the same.
Ole Gunnar Solskjaer’s spell at Man Utd has aged like wine due to what followed him after at Old Trafford.
Bruno Fernandes was the architect of a lot of success achieved under the Norwegian, so he would know better than anybody how it all ended.
That resonance will get stronger after Fernandes is in the same trap that doomed his previous manager at Man Utd.
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Bruno Fernandes is stuck adjusting to Cristiano Ronaldo
Solskjaer’s United were looking so close to the promised land until that fateful summer of 2021, which promised so much and delivered so little.
Cristiano Ronaldo joined in a marquee deal that set the pulses racing, and while there were plenty of goals for the player, the team’s balance became all wrong.
That issue carried over to Erik ten Hag’s time, ending in a spectacular burning of bridges with the club, with the notion of adjusting to Ronaldo holding the club back.
Five years on from that signing, which turned out to be a disaster, Fernandes is stuck in the same loop again, only at the biggest stage of international football.
With two draws and a win in three games, Portugal are through to the knockout rounds, but they look a lot less than the sum of their parts.
Man Utd fans will be familiar with that problem, since that is exactly what it felt like watching their club when Ronaldo was leading the line.
The insistence of Roberto Martinez to start and play him every minute, and his standing in the game, is making a golden generation of footballers cater to him, instead of playing their game.
Portugal’s game plan is to feed Ronaldo, but the 41-year-old version of the legend is just not taking those chances at the same rate.
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Fernandes is having to do double shifts in a game, at No. 10 and in central midfield, as he plugs the gaps left by Ronaldo’s lack of pressing.
In attack, Ronaldo is mistiming his runs, missing chances, hampering the movement of those around him, and bringing even more pressure on his side with his statements.
This is a team full of fluid-moving, intelligent, creative maestros, Fernandes the chief among them, and they’re having to adjust to a player who just won’t admit that his best days are behind him.
Two goals against Uzbekistan weren’t a signal that Ronaldo is back, they were the same goals Ronaldo scored at United as the club plunged from one crisis to another.
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