SPORT: Football
Cristiano Ronaldo has complained of an injury and flew to Portugal after hearing he would be benched for Manchester United’s derby against Manchester City.

The super­star was stunned to learn from boss Ralf Rang­nick that he won’t start against Man City.

Rang­nick said he want­ed fresh legs for the game and believed Ronal­do could make an impact from the bench. But the Unit­ed leg­end insist­ed he could do it from the start and was furi­ous at being sacked. He is believed to be hop­ing to heal his injury with warm weath­er in his homeland.

Accord­ing to Sun­Sport, his team­mates were sur­prised he did­n’t stay at the team hotel on Sat­ur­day night.

The 37-year-old had test­ed pos­i­tive in train­ing last week and was look­ing for­ward to the Eti­had-City clash.

But Unit­ed inter­im man­ag­er Rang­nick was told by the club’s med­ical depart­ment on Fri­day that Ronal­do had a hip flex­or injury. After yes­ter­day’s 4–1 humil­i­a­tion, Rang­nick insist­ed: “I have to believe my med­ical service.

“Our doc­tor came to see me on Fri­day morn­ing before train­ing and told me that Cris­tiano could­n’t train because of prob­lems with his hip flex­or and the same on Sat­ur­day.” Strik­er Edin­son Cavani was also miss­ing after appar­ent­ly not feel­ing well enough to play fol­low­ing his recent groin problem.

When asked when they would be back, Rang­nick replied, “I don’t know. I was hop­ing to have them avail­able for this game.

“We have two impor­tant games ahead against Spurs and Atleti­co and we need to focus on that.”

Rumors start­ed cir­cu­lat­ing on social media on Sat­ur­day night that Ronal­do had retired from the squad.

The Insta­gram account that start­ed the rumor is cr7.0_lendario — who is fol­lowed by Ronaldo.

Claimed posi­tion: “The Man­ches­ter Unit­ed man­ag­er wants to go into tomor­row’s game with a dif­fer­ent strat­e­gy and has cho­sen to defend more, a pure­ly tac­ti­cal choice. Ronal­do won’t even be on the bench.

The post was appre­ci­at­ed by Ronal­do’s sis­ter, Katia Aveiro.

For­mer Unit­ed cap­tain Roy Keane added fuel to the fire ahead of the game, say­ing: “I don’t like it when the man­ag­er talks about that ‘hip flex­or’. I don’t get it.

“We talk about Ronal­do being a machine and then every once in a while he comes out with a ‘hip flex­or’. It does­n’t stick. »

Con­tact­ed by Sun­Sport, Ronal­do’s rep­re­sen­ta­tives insist­ed it was an injury that kept him out.