Cristiano Ronaldo was once like alcohol in Turin: the cause of and solution to all of Juventus ' problems.
Signed from Real Madrid for £105million in the summer of 2018, the five-time Ballon d'Or winner was brought in to boost the Bianconeri to beyond their perceived boundaries and finally win the Champions League after agonisingly losing two finals in four years.
Yet with a remarkable record of 101 goals in just 131 games, Ronaldo - for all his incredible feats and talisman presence - failed, and was ultimately part of a Juventus team which slowly regressed after his arrival.
As the Serie A giants grew over-reliant on his goalscoring prowess and lost their identity in the process, it wasn't a coincidence that the Portuguese megastar played under three different managers over his three seasons in Italy. Not one boss found a way to succeed - at least in European competition - with him as the immovable bedrock of the attack.
But that didn't matter to Manchester United. The Red Devils still jumped at their chance to re-sign their former prodigy last summer. This time it was they who believed that Ronaldo could take them to new heights and provide the literal finishing touch on a team who'd just finished second in the Premier League and seemingly needed a pinch of quality to seriously challenge for the title.
Unfortunately, history repeated itself. Ole Gunnar Solskjaer ran into the same stumbling block as Massimiliano Allegri did in 2018-19, quickly realising that his system didn't gel with Ronaldo's style of play, which was becoming increasingly one-note as he entered his mid-30s.
Then Ralf Rangnick, like Maurizio Sarri, wasn't able to weld his progressive football to the Portugal captain's traits, but the third man at each club - Erik ten Hag and Andrea Pirlo - have gone down markedly different routes.
Whilst Italian legend Pirlo stuck with Ronaldo and attempted in vain to work around him - only to scrape a fourth-place finish in the league and surrender Juventus' nine-year grip on the Scudetto - Ten Hag has coldly decided to drop him from his first XI and is heeding some crucial advice from Turin, specifically that of Leonardo Bonucci's.
"Last year the team played for him, now the group must rediscover that Juve spirit that was there before his arrival," Bianconeri centre-back Bonucci stated shortly after Ronaldo left Juventus to join United in August 2021. "This was the thing, the idea that one player, even the best in the world, could guarantee Juventus victory.
"Cristiano's presence had a big influence on us. Just training with him gave us something extra but subconsciously players started to think his presence alone was enough to win games. We began to fall a little short in our daily work, the humility, the sacrifice, the desire to be there for your team-mate day after day. Over the last few years, I think you could see that."
Fortunately for Ten Hag, he's been smart enough to avoid the trap of focusing too much on Ronaldo, albeit the scorer of a superb 24 goals last season, and is instead choosing to chart his own path back to the top. And on Wednesday, the night that the Dutch tactician decided to drop his No.7 after two toothless performances and start with a front line more capable of implementing his philosophy, he was vindicated - not the first time either.
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Having already beaten Liverpool and Arsenal without Ronaldo in his starting XI, Ten Hag stuck with his forward-thinking recipe for success and masterminded an excellent 2-0 win against Tottenham Hotspur. Whilst Juventus continue to scurry around, searching for a way out of their Ronaldo rabbit hole, United are already one step ahead.
And the 37-year-old has even made it easier for his manager to stick to his guns, having stormed down the tunnel before full-time after being an unused substitute in the Red Devils' victory over Tottenham. Ten Hag has quickly reprimanded Ronaldo for his behaviour, axing him from the squad ahead of Saturday's clash with Chelsea and making him train alone.
He may be the greatest player to ever grace Old Trafford, but right now, it doesn't seem like he'll be missed.
