Manchester United manager Erik ten Hag has refuted rumours that the team’s legendary striker, Cristiano Ronaldo, wants to leave. The Dutch manager has said that this is just the assumption of the media, and is not what he is hearing from the superstar himself.

Regarding Ronaldo being in his plans, ten Hag said, “I deal with the players we have and we plan with him [Ronaldo] for this season and we have to fit him into the team so he has to come at the right fitness levels so that he can do the job that we expect him to do”.

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ten Hag was also asked by reporters whether he had spoken to Marcus Rashford about PSG’s apparent interest in signing the latter. The Dutchman said, “he knows I love him, he knows I want him to be here so I will tell him that again”. 

Notably, the Portuguese skipper missed out on Man United’s pre-season tour citing personal reasons. Ronaldo and his agent, Jorge Mendes, were both eager to leave United since the club missed out on qualifying for the Champions League, the tournament whose record charts are dominated by the United no. 7.

However, no big European club showed much interest in signing the 37-year-old goal machine, including Bayern Munich and Ronaldo’s former club Real Madrid’s city rivals, Atletico Madrid. He was also linked with another English club, Chelsea, but no deal came to fruition.

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Ronaldo, interestingly, was benched by ten Hag for United’s first Premier League match of the season against Brighton on August 7. Marcus Rashford was fielded as the striker instead. After Brighton ended up scoring twice in the first half, Ronaldo, the world’s leading scorer in men’s football, was brought on. However, United ended up losing 2-1, with the one goal for them also coming off a Brighton player’s own goal. United are set to take on Brentford tonight.