Meet Ruud van Nistelrooy, Man United's interim manager - ESPN

The best managers, with few exceptions, are usually the biggest personality in a football dressing room, but Ruud van Nistelrooy won't have any problem ticking that box at Manchester United. This is a man who made Cristiano Ronaldo cry and ended his own playing days at the club with an expletive-laden rant at then-United manager Sir Alex Ferguson.

Van Nistelrooy, who has been installed as interim head coach at Old Trafford following Erik ten Hag's dismissal as manager on Monday, earned his place in United's history books as a player as a prolific striker, scoring 150 goals in 219 appearances in a five-year period at the club before leaving in acrimonious circumstances for Real Madrid in 2006.

«In his last season, he [Van Nistelrooy] became a really difficult boy,» Ferguson said in his autobiography. «I don't think he was popular by the end. Ruud had started to mouth off all the time to [assistant manager] Carlos Queiroz about Ronaldo. There were a few stand-up confrontations.»

Those confrontations included forcing Ronaldo to tears in a training ground bust-up shortly after the young forward suffered the loss of his father and a moment during the 2006 EFL Cup final, after Van Nistelrooy had been dropped by Ferguson to the bench, when he reacted angrily to the manager's decision not to give him game time.

"'You s---,' said Van Nistelrooy. I'll always remember that," Ferguson revealed in his autobiography.

So how much of this matters almost 20 years on? Van Nistelrooy and Ferguson have long since patched up their relationship, and the 48-year-old has said that he and Ronaldo have since «figured it out» and now have a «perfect relationship.»

But while the events from his playing days at Old Trafford are now water under the