Boy Ronaldo overstepping his position

Sideline Cut: An awful lot of people seem to have a fierce set against the lad Cristiano Ronaldo, who plays for Manchester United. It would be stretching it to suggest he ranks up there with George W Bush in terms of universal unpopularity, but for a twinkle-toed, smiley-headed soccer player, Ronaldo seems to have a gift for making folks apoplectic with rage.

Nary a bar in Ireland can you enter when Manchester United are on the box (and they are always on the box) but someone will declare menacingly one of the following.

Would you look at the head on that wee . . . . . . . ?/Hate that wee . . . . . . ./Wouldn't you just love to hit that . . . . . . . a clip/That's the wee . . . . . . . tried to get Rooney sent off in the World Cup/He's a slippery wee . . . . . . . but he's good.

And these are just the United fans.

There is no doubt the lad has a few irritating habits. He is indubitably in possession of the dark, Latino looks that make him a football agent's dream. But the effect is rather spoiled by the fact Ronaldo has an annoying head on him. Too many grimaces and grins and pouts and ticks. Too damn busy, particularly given he plays alongside Paul Scholes, who has maintained the same glum expression of resolute pessimism for the past 12 years now.

Ronaldo drives a speculative shot from 35 yards that veers off into the Stretford End, and by the time the television slow-motion replays have finished, you are left with a blinding headache from his bewildering array of facial gymnastics.

Then there is the matter of Ronaldo's footwork. Again, there is no denying the lad wears a tricky pair of Moody Blues. He tends to sport the kind of absurdly flashy and ostentatious football boots that must have drawn a few choice words from Roy Keane in the good old days when the Irishman was top dog in the United dressingroom. Ronaldo favours the kind of footwear even Fred Astaire would have considered loud, and there are times on the football field when he seems to be mimicking the old MGM dance master as well.

It often appears Ronaldo is incapable of passing the football from A to B without indulging in a bout of Michael Flatley-style hot stepping. It is vaguely impressive the first and second time you see it. After several more such flourishes though, a stranger to the game might be forgiven for wondering if the poor lad didn't suffer from some kind of affliction of the nerve ends that results in these involuntary body shakes.

For more often that not, Ronaldo's little tap dances achieve absolutely nothing at all. The thing about flashy soccer is that you have to be beating opposition players when you go about it.

That is surely why the old clips of Pele in 1970 or Georgie Best on all those muddy English league classics or the grace notes Zidane hit during the last World Cup are so loved. They were actually going places and in doing so indulging the crowd. Ronaldo often seems more interested in self-indulgence.

The fact Ronaldo has been permitted to wander through the season without sustaining any life-threatening tackles has highlighted the demise of the Hard Man from English football. What fun it would be to see Graham Souness or even a sub-standard Hard Man like Julian Dicks demonstrating to Ronaldo what he thought of the fancy stuff. Even United old boys like Paul Ince and Bryan Robson must feel that old sadistic rush of blood, that need to take the legs from under someone, when they see Ronaldo getting jiggy with it in broad daylight.

It was not so long ago that such behaviour was accepted as risky. The famous photograph where Vinny Jones was caught grabbing the then young and fresh Paul Gascoigne was a perfect illustration.

Vinny was really just a caricature of a Hard Man but he was genuinely cheesed off at that moment, as he seized the Geordie manhood of poor Gazza, whose contorted face suggested the squealing of a bonham.

It was an outrageous act but it did seem to adhere to some universal sporting law. Gazza was, after all, the cheeky little entertainer of his day, the talented crowd pleaser and a marvel with the ball. Vinny Jones could hardly play football at all. But he was bigger than Gazza and the world is not a fair place. Encountering Vinny Jones in a foul mood was just one of the perils of Gazza's life.

Now, there are no hard men left. Even Keane, who in his playing days was granite personified, has gone all New Age as he sets about becoming a great manager, confessing this week that if his boys need softer pillows to sleep on, he will happily see to it.

It could be that the departure of Roy Keane from Old Trafford gave Ronaldo the freedom to go showboating about the place with no fear of reprimand. There was probably a day when Alex Ferguson would have banned such indulgence but the flinty Scotsman is getting older now.

Keane would undoubtedly have thrown a growl in Ronaldo's direction or stilled him with one of those chilling stares. And it would have been for his own good. Because there are times when his tricks seem like little more than insults to the opposition.

What Ronaldo is basically saying is, "Look, I can tool about on the ball like this and there is nothing you can do about it."

In bygone decades, some leaden-footed, clever-headed, hot-tempered midfielder would have snapped and put an end to the fancy work and maybe to Ronaldo's season with it.

But now, even John Giles, the most entertaining and arch of all the boy Ronaldo's critics, has come to acknowledge that for all the needless shimmies and the petulant faces and the diving and the general prima donna demeanour, Ronaldo can play the game a little. He has already won two successive Player of the month awards in the Premiership and was instrumental in the destruction of Roma during the week.

The big question concerns his ability to sustain that form now that United enter the crucial weeks of their season, weeks that will reconfirm Ferguson's legend.

There are those who will always be maddened by the cut of Ronaldo, and for them yesterday's news he had pledged his future to United for the next five years must be rough indeed. Of course, there is always the chance the boy will grow up in that time.

There is always the chance that Ronaldo, the showman they love to hate, will one day end up the senior statesman at United, wiser and grumpier and missing Paul Scholes.