Cristiano comes home

Shirt sales are a massive myth that Real started to justify their spending (and to hide the fact that fact both the Spanish Royal Family and the local government would put pressure on Spanish banks to offer them 0% loans and then further pressure to write them off a few years later. That summer they signed Ronaldo, Benzema and Kaka all that money came from Santander which they wrote off 5 years later with Real having made the minimum possible payment)

The reality is that the shirt deals see the club only entitled to a very small royalty on the sales. The wholesale price is around 50-70% of what the retailer sells it for. The Club gets around 5% of the manufacturer's income from wholesale. From that income players generally through their image and naming rights deals get 20% of the clubs cut of shirts sold with their name on it (or any other merch with their name, brand or image on). They are hence making perhaps £1.5 per shirt. And ultimately signings don't boost sales all that much, most people who buy shirts do so anyway, many who bought the Ronaldo one would have simply been waiting until deadline day to decide who they were getting on the back. United sell around 3million shirts a season, there may be a boost of a few hundred thousand with people who had already bought one and buy another or those who were undecided and would have decided against it but most will have bought it anyway. So 3million at £1.50 a shirt is about £4.5mill in total for all shirt sales.

There is the fact that clubs obviously do have official outlets so in theory, they get retailer cuts on all of these but that also doesn't work that way. Both online and physical stores are largely not managed by the clubs these days. Online the likes of Kitbag and for United Fanatics pay a fee to run the online store, the club gets a small royalty on sales. And physical stores are usually managed by an outside company too, sometimes the online store but I belive United's is currently managed by Adidas (certainly Nike used to run it and there wasn't any announcement of a separate 3rd party taking it over when we switched shirt manufacturer so it would suggest its Adidas

 

It's weird because so many of them doubting him seem to forget that goal of his at the Euros against Germany where he headed a corner away and then ran all the way up the pitch quicker than anyone else to get on the end of the pass

 

As skilful as Messi is he just isn't close to Ronaldo in my book. Doing it in 3 of the top 4 leagues in Europe and then coming back to what is physically the toughest big league in Europe and already showing he will do great just shows his quality. Not to mention he has dragged Portugal up with his performances way more than Messi has in a much more talented Argie side (The amount of times Messi has gone missing in WC matches is too many to count, can't think of a single one even against poor opposition where he hasn't been really poor and overshadowed by multiple of his teammates). Messi spent all his time in a team that was so packed with talent and whose league massively favours attacking players to score a tonne as outside the top 3 (and maybe 1 or 2 who join in each season) is really poor quality. Just look at how many goals the likes of Forlan (27th highest la liga goalscorer on 128 goals), Negrado (29th - 126) , Soldardo (33rd - 120), Kanoute (66th - 89) and Llorente (70th - 88), all who struggled in England. He has now gone to France which is the 6th best league in Europe (behind Portugal) to a team that just throws money round while everyone else is having to sell off their star players as the TV deal collapsing has put them all at risk, so he has taken the easy way out, if he had anything about him he would have held out, dropped his wage demands and ensured he ended up back with Pep

 

When he has come on Lingrad has looked pretty good, more back to his old self rather than the shadow that saw him not getting game time. Seems what he needed was to get the issues in his personal life sorted and to get away and find his love of football again. Still probably needs to leave for the good of his career but as long as he is at United I'm fine having him as a reliable backup when we need to bring on fresh legs or when we need to rotate