Cristiano Ronaldo sparks Atletico Madrid self-doubt as Manchester United superstar eyes Paris redemption

Cristiano Ronaldo is not one for self doubt, but even he felt some relief on Saturday evening.

After a difficult few months at Manchester United, where the logic of the transfer was again questioned, the Portuguese was finally doing what he was signed for.

Ronaldo was once more the goalscorer, once more the hero. Another defeated team felt that familiar deflation, from one of his thunderous headers.

It is a feeling Atletico Madrid know too well. It is an image Atletico Madrid know too well.

As Sunday’s match at Stamford Bridge emphasised, football has a funny way of bringing many different threads to really energise a fixture, and Tuesday’s Champions League second-leg match at Old Trafford is a perfect example of that. This one, at least, is almost entirely based on events on the pitch.

There, Ronaldo has mostly been underwhelming. That was true of the 1-1 draw in the first leg of this last-16 tie.

The Metropolitano crowd loved that, given how much pain he has inflicted on them over the years.

But he’s now come to form at an ominous time, in a competition he has still been revelling in.

Even if it’s true that some of Manchester United’s group-stage issues were down to trying to accommodate Ronaldo, he offered the solution to those problems by scoring the goals that put the side into the last 16.

Figures at other clubs do still have that lingering fear that the Portuguese can help United put one of those runs together. This is the Champions League. It’s happened enough times before, most notably 2005, 2012 and 2021.

This is also the competition that has seen Ronaldo inflict the most pain on Atletico. Much has been made of the statistic that Simeone’s side have been eliminated from the knock-outs by sides featuring Ronaldo