Photo: Online
The team is devastated on the field, but the star footballer is on the bench. As Manchester United's 6-3 loss against Manchester City sparked a storm of discussion, Cristiano Ronaldo's absence from the field has also caused surprise. United coach Eric ten Haag's explanation after the match also aroused quite a lot of curiosity.
City took a 4-0 first-half lead at home in the Manchester derby on Sunday (October 2) in the English Premier League. United may struggle a bit in the second half. However, the champions won the match 6-3. Ronaldo was only a spectator in the whole match.
Ronaldo is no longer a regular in United's XI. If you don't get a place in the starting eleven, that's fine. But when the team is playing on the field like this, many questions arise because Ronaldo is not brought down. Erik ten Haag's words at the end of the match indicated that he did not want to give Ronaldo an embarrassing experience in such a big loss.
He said he did not nominate Cristiano out of respect for him and his remarkable career. Another thing is that I wanted to take the opportunity to play Atani Martial. He needed to spend time on the field. He went down and scored two goals.”
Anthony scored a great goal for United in the second half. Martial later scored two goals. However, Phil Foden and Arlie Holland's hat-tricks gave City a great victory. When you have to lose by a big margin despite scoring three goals, it shows how strong the opponent was. Ten Haag, however, sees more responsibility for his team. The United coach's post-mortem revealed that his side's defeat was due to a lack of confidence.
He said it is very common, a lack of confidence. When a team does not believe in themselves on the field, they cannot win. It is unacceptable. We didn't follow the plan and ended up crashing. That's it today. Credit must go to City. But it's not about City, it's about our performance. This is due to a lack of confidence on the part of everyone as a team and individually. I felt it from the first minute."
Sometimes there is a touch of positivity even in a losing match. But Ten Haag is not seeing any gain from this match. He said, I can't think of anything positive at the moment. We didn't give the fans what they deserved, we didn't do ourselves justice and we're hugely disappointed.
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