Former Manchester United coach lifts lid on Erik ten Hag and Cristiano Ronaldo clash

Steve McClaren says he couldn’t fault the way Erik ten Hag handled Cristiano Ronaldo at Manchester United, saying the Dutchman set standards that the legendary forward didn’t meet.

Ronaldo’s second spell at Old Trafford began under Ole Gunnar Solskjaer and, after a brief stint under Ralf Rangnick, ended with Erik ten Hag in charge.

The pair did not see eye-to-eye, with the veteran finding himself out of the team, a position he was not accustomed to and didn’t like very much.

Ten Hag did not bow to the wishes of the Portuguese icon, though, and Ronaldo ended up leaving for Saudi Arabia, criticising the manager and the club heavily on his way out.

McClaren was a coach at Manchester United at the time, since leaving to take over as Jamaica manager, and he feels Ten Hag was spot on in his approach with Ronaldo.

‘I couldn’t fault his approach,’ McClaren told The Telegraph of Ten Hag. ‘He really handled it very well. I said at the time he was the right man to go in. That was shown in the way he handled Ronaldo.

‘He came in with set standards. Set rules. Set way of playing. And if you didn’t run, you didn’t play. He was rigid on that. Which the Dutch are. He knew that was what was needed. There could be no flexibility.

‘This is what you had to do – or you didn’t play. And he took on Ronaldo, and quite rightly. Other managers have tried to adapt. Erik didn’t feel it was necessary to do that. Rangnick had tried and it hadn’t quite worked out and Ole the same. So he [Ten Hag] stuck to his guns and developed other players.’

McClaren says that the level of discipline and the high standards that Ten Hag demanded from his players is what you would expect at Manchester United, but did not go down well with some.

‘Instances like lateness for meetings was well documented, the Wolves one, [when Marcus Rashford] was a minute or two late for a meeting on game day. He [Ten Hag] put him on the bench,’ recalled McClaren. ‘Granted he put him [Rashford] on and he scored the winner.

‘Things like that were important. Discipline was important. Standards were important. Behaviour was important. Everybody knows that about United. That’s what he [Ten Hag] brought. Some people didn’t like that – that’s normal – but he never swayed from it. That’s his strength.’

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