Queiroz U-turn in the Ronaldo debate

The former Manchester United assistant manager Carlos Queiroz performed one of the more extraordinary U-turns of recent times when he claimed yesterday that the issue of whether Cristiano Ronaldo left for Real Madrid or not was nothing to do with him. Having departed Old Trafford for the second time, the new coach of the Portugal national team washed his hands of the issue blighting his former employers.

Queiroz's comments will have surely caught the attention of Sir Alex Ferguson who has had to listen to, among others, Real Madrid president Ramon Calderon and the Fifa president Sepp Blatter encourage Ronaldo to break his contract at United. Introduced yesterday as the Portugal coach, Queiroz replied to a question about Ronaldo's future by saying: "As a national team coach and being attached to the Portuguese football federation, we must not interfere with relations that are professional between our players and clubs. We should not even have an opinion about that."

This was the same Queiroz who on 27 May accused Real of trying to "naturalise" Ronaldo and invoked historical territorial feuds between Spain and Portugal to demonstrate what he clearly regarded as Real's peculiar brand of arrogance.

Yesterday, the voice discouraging Ronaldo from joining Real came from his potential future team-mate Wesley Sneijder who said that a player on outlandish wages would spoil the balance of the Real dressing room.

He said: "It would be bad for the dressing room if he gets a much higher salary than the rest. It's not important to me, but I know that other team-mates would not like that at all. Here we have footballers like him, for example [Arjen] Robben or Robinho. I want to play with Cristiano, but you also have to have equilibrium in the dressing room."

United fly to South Africa today without the injured Ronaldo. Edwin Van der Sar, Patrice Evra and Nani are also rested after their involvement in Euro 2008.

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