Sakha: Ronaldo redefines the way the winger plays, and such a transformation requires amazing wisdom

Former Manchester United player Louis Saha recently accepted an interview with the media, and he believes that Ronaldo has completely changed the way the winger plays.

When he first joined Manchester United from Portugal Sports at the age of 18, Ronaldo was still a traditional winger who was good at dribbling speed, but then gradually broke the convention of the wing player's main player breaking through the cross and transformed into a goal-scoring machine. Sakha said: "I have witnessed his transformation as a winger. In theory, his duty should have been to cross for Van Nicht, me or later Tevez. But in my last season at Manchester United, he scored more than 30 goals (actually 42 goals). Ronaldo reshaped the definition of a winger. In recent years, we have seen Salah and Mane scored a lot of goals, but Ronaldo is the pioneer."

Currently, Sakha is coaching the youth training camp with Manchester United players Osheim and Berbatov at the age of 5-16. When he transferred to Manchester United from Fulham in January 2004, Ronaldo was in the middle of his Premier League debut season. Sakha immediately realized that the Madeira teenager was extraordinary: "I immediately realized that Ronaldo is special not only because he is the most talented, but also because he is the hardest player outside the training base. He practices at home and always arrives at the training ground the earliest."

Sakha recalled that even if Ronaldo was injured, he could recover to 70-80% of his state two days after the game. This may be due to his early investment in physical care and top-level rehabilitation processes, which have become the industry standards now. Sakha also tried to imitate Ronaldo's extra training method, adding super high-intensity special training after regular training, but he was exhausted: "I'll be useless if I practice for an hour or two. But he did this in every training class, which is simply a machine. No one can withstand this intensity, and his concentration is amazing."

Sakha said that he had long foresaw Ronaldo's great career, and even predicted that he won the Golden Globe five times, but he admitted that no one could have expected that the 40-year-old Ronaldo would still play for Riyadh and continue to set a new goal record.

Saha said: "Looking back then, no one believed that he could achieve such a achievement, which is almost impossible. Who could foresee that someone could achieve it? Even though Portugal has many geniuses, he did not win before winning the European Cup in 2016. Ronaldo is the key to breaking through history."

Although the Manchester United years under Ferguson from 2003 to 2009 were a perfect period of evolution, Saha believed that Ronaldo had truly completed the transformation of a scorer in Real Madrid: "It is a miracle when a genius knows how to listen to physical signals and achieve the most accurate transformation on the platform of the highest pressure. Although he has superstars such as Bale and Benzema, most of the goals are still completed by him. As a player, I know the difficulty of changing the timing of playing, which requires amazing wisdom. "