Cristiano Ronaldo's hopes of forcing through a Manchester United exit during the January transfer window have suffered a blow as the idea of him returning to Sporting Lison has been quashed.
It is thought that the five-time Ballon d'Or winner favoured a return to his boyhood club to mark the final chapter of an illustrious club career, but Sporting's boss Ruben Amorim is not optimistic a deal can be struck. This comes despite the fact that United are reportedly keen to offload the wantaway striker before he causes further disruption to the Old Trafford dressing room.
He has already been the subject of one punishment from manager Erik ten Hag this month, with the Dutchman temporarily banning him from the first-team fold in training and for the recent 1-1 draw away at Chelsea after he refused to come off the bench in the last knockings of the win against Tottenham last week.
To make matters worse, once Ronaldo made clear to his manager he had no intention of following orders and coming on, he stormed down the Old Trafford tunnel minutes before the full-time whistle had been blown.
Some would question why Sporting would want that kind of problem in their own dressing room, but it looks unlikely that Amorim will be faced with a similar headache to Ten Hag anytime soon if his comments are anything to go by.
The Sporting boss told reporters: "Ronaldo is a Manchester United player. Everybody in Sporting dreams of the return for Cristiano but we don't have the money to pay his wages."
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It is true that the Portugal skipper is on an eye-watering sum of money at Old Trafford and is believed to be the best paid-player in the Premier League. It is an expense that is currently not proving to be worth it from United's viewpoint, with Ten Hag reluctant to even use Ronaldo in the most important fixtures.
With that in mind, the United boss was recently grilled on the amount of game-time he has handed to the Red Devils number seven by Sky Sports. He replied: "I think he has played over 700 minutes in the season so far which is a respectable number.
"It is not as much as [Jadon] Sancho or [Marcus] Rashford, they have a bit more but not a lot more so we have that group of offensive players and we need rotation because no one can play every game."
Even with Ten Hag's rotation, Ronaldo is clearly surplus to requirements at United in the eyes of the manager long-term.
