Inside Football With... Quinton Fortune

The former Atletico Madrid, Manchester United and South African international is now doing his UEFA A badge. He remembers Cristiano Ronaldo arriving at Old Trafford in 2003.

If Cristiano could have spoken English when he arrived in England, he would have told everyone that he was the best. Instead, he hardly spoke any and it was left to Diego Forlan and I to do a lot of translating for him and another new Portuguese speaker, Kleberson.

I liked Cristiano straight away. I wanted him to feel welcomed and remembered how I had felt walking into the dressing room at Atletico Madrid when I didn’t know anybody and couldn’t speak the language. It’s difficult and I didn’t want to feel an outsider.

We’d seen him destroy our defence in a friendly for Sporting in Lisbon, but United had been watching him before that and Cristiano knew it. So he had a point to prove that he was worth signing and he did plenty of step overs and dribbles. He wasn’t a show pony; he was incredibly talented.

Cristiano was skinny and needed to work on his physique when he came to England. In training he wanted to have fun and embarrass his teammates by going past them again and again. We’d never seen anything like the kid. He was obsessed with step overs and showing his skills. Not tricks, skills. We didn’t tell him that he was wrong just because he was different; we could see that he was hugely talented.

He wanted to do everything better than ever other player, to learn do tricks all the time. He was always the best at step overs, but he started doing them with weights strapped to his ankles so that it would be easier in a real game. He would practice a trick slowly by himself. Then he’d try it in training games. Finally, he’d do it in a real game. If he saw someone do a new trick he would ask them how they did it. Then he’d teach himself until he was the best.

I used to balance the ball on my forehead and roll it onto the crown of my head. Cristiano asked me about it. Three days later he was better than me at it and he actually goaded me to say that he was better!

He was influenced by his background and he’d seen two Portuguese speakers Ronaldinho and the original Ronaldo. He was also arrogant – in a self-assured way – that he wasn’t going to change his style to fit in. The rest of the players found it amusing. They rated him because they saw what he could do in training and his ‘I can deal with anything’ attitude.

Cristiano made his debut against Bolton and was outstanding. There was no freezing in front of 68,000 people, he loved that big stage. The only thing he lacked was the end product and that caused some frustration from players.

It’s the hardest thing in football to beat a man, but he had the ability to do it. We wanted him to go past his man and put the ball in. He wanted to go past players again and again. He wanted to embarrass them and at times it was too much.

We played Charlton away and he tore an opponent apart. A week later, Cristiano beckoned me over to show me highlights of him destroying several players. I don’t know any other player who would have done it and I didn’t want to kill his vibe, yet I also thought what he was doing was great. He had so much self-belief.

Cristiano learned how to provide the end product and became the best player in Europe while at Manchester United. He did that by training really hard and then practising after training. He had huge amounts of self-belief, determination, desire and hunger. When I see him now, as successful off the pitch as he is on it, I think ‘hard work has got him there’.

He developed in the right environment too. Sir Alex Ferguson protected him, and having a compatriot in Carlos Queiroz was good for him. I’ve been in a dressing room when Sir Alex hammered the entire team…except Cristiano.

But I also saw Sir Alex change because of young foreign players like Cristiano.

He knew that players reacted differently – there was no point in him giving them the hairdryer and he quietened down. It was a real surprise to me to see the change, but he created an environment that was conducive to progress and Ronaldo was one of the players who helped United win the European Cup in 2008.

By then, he could speak English fine, yet his dress sense had barely changed. It was shocking and he wore the tightest pants, which made us laugh. He didn’t care what we thought and I loved that.

I also remember when he got the number 7 shirt worn by Best, Cantona and Beckham. We joked with Cristiano that he’d only have it for a short period because Beckham was a United legend who would be returning to reclaim his rightful seven. Cristiano believed us and I think that made him extra determined to keep it.

I’ve seen lots of talented youngsters in football, but none with the focus of Cristiano. He deserves all his success.