You were deceived when they told you Ronaldo is the problem: "The well of traitors" summons the legend's enemies!

The all-time top scorer in football suffered several setbacks during his career!

For years, Cristiano Ronaldo sat in the firing line whenever a team of his stumbled, as if his presence were the easiest explanation for any crisis, or his departure the magic cure.

Critics called him selfish. His goals were sometimes dressed up as proof of a flaw in the system, until the Portuguese became a permanent suspect in crises he had not built alone.

Look closer at his major stops, though, and a more complex picture emerges. The clubs he left behind did not all crumble into ruins, and his exit did not directly cause every difficulty they met. Yet each one slid into a different phase of rebuilding, decline or instability.

One truth is hard to ignore between the numbers and the titles. Ronaldo did more than score goals. He handed his teams an exceptional attacking value that nobody replaces easily.

Real Madrid was the most dazzling chapter in Ronaldo's career. He arrived as a record signing from Manchester United and left as the Spanish giants' all-time top scorer.

Across nine seasons, he played 438 official matches and scored 450 goals, leading the team to 16 titles. Chief among them were four Champions League trophies and two La Liga titles, alongside two Copa del Rey titles, three UEFA Super Cups, three FIFA Club World Cup titles and two Spanish Super Cups.

His move to Juventus in the summer of 2018 laid bare just how hard those goals would be to replace. Real Madrid ended the 2018-2019 season without a major title and crashed out of the Champions League against Ajax, beaten 1-4 at the Santiago Bernabeu.

Read also: Ronaldo slaps Jesus three times: the fiery backstory behind the historic decision

The club eventually rebuilt and lifted major titles again, but Ronaldo's exit left an attacking void that no one filled overnight.

Karim Benzema offered the clearest proof. His former teammate spoke frankly about the role he played alongside the Portuguese star, explaining that Ronaldo scored 50 goals every season, so he had to adapt to his style of play. The departure, he added, handed him a different role and forced him to shoulder the responsibility of deciding matches. It was telling testimony from a player who benefited from Ronaldo's exit yet refused to downplay what he once gave the team.

Marcelo was even blunter. The Brazilian full-back and close friend of Ronaldo insisted that any team would miss the best player in the world once he walked out the door, and that everyone wished to have Cristiano in their side. This was no mere compliment from a former teammate. It was an acknowledgement of the sheer scale of the loss Real Madrid suffered when one of the greatest stars in their history left.

Ronaldo's time in Turin left just as deep a mark. He arrived at Juventus in 2018 carrying the hopes of a club desperate to end its UEFA Champions League drought, and the individual numbers backed up the hype: 101 goals in 134 official matches and five trophies, including two Serie A titles, one Italian Cup and two Italian Super Cups.

The criticism came anyway. Juventus crashed out of the Champions League without winning the very prize Ronaldo had been signed to deliver.

Some critics went so far as to blame him for altering the team's collective identity. Gianluigi Buffon offered a sharper reading. The legendary goalkeeper admitted Juventus lost part of their collective identity in that period, then later made clear it was not Ronaldo's doing. The Portuguese delivered exactly what was asked of him, Buffon insisted, and the real problem was the reluctance of certain players to adapt to a star of that magnitude.

Giorgio Chiellini, the former Juventus defensive captain, added his own verdict on Ronaldo's worth. Give him a team playing to his strengths, the defender said, and the Portuguese was decisive. His presence would have been a huge boost to Juventus had he stayed.

Chiellini also pointed to the shock of Ronaldo's late exit in August 2021. The club paid the price, he argued, for having no time to prepare for life without him.

Juventus duly lost the Serie A title they had held for nine straight seasons. A spell of technical instability followed before they reclaimed the crown in 2023-2024.

None of this makes Ronaldo solely responsible for the team's triumphs or failures. But it confirms one thing: a player banging in more than 30 goals a season handed the system an exceptional attacking weapon, and replacing him was never going to be simple.

Ronaldo returned to Manchester United in the summer of 2021 amid huge fan celebrations, as if coming back to complete an unfinished story at Old Trafford.

He scored 24 goals across all competitions in his first season back and finished as the team's top scorer, despite the slump in results and the problems surrounding the squad.

Erik ten Hag's arrival changed everything between the Portuguese star and the club. His role in the starting line-up shrank, the dispute over how he was handled and his standing within the team escalated, and it all culminated in the famous interview with Piers Morgan, followed by the mutual termination of his contract in November 2022.

Across his two spells with Manchester United, Ronaldo scored 145 goals in 346 matches and won eight titles. Most notably, he lifted three Premier League titles, the UEFA Champions League, the Club World Cup and the FA Cup, as well as two League Cups.

His value in that final season went beyond the numbers. He was one of the few players capable of making a difference in a team struggling to get results.

Rio Ferdinand, Ronaldo's former teammate and a club legend, defended those goals in that context. Where, he asked before the player's departure, would Manchester United make up 24 goals if they let him leave? The message was clear about the goalscoring value the team stood to lose, even if the following seasons proved other players could fill the gap.

Ronaldo himself later pointed to deeper problems. He argued that Manchester United needed a complete rebuild of the management, the infrastructure and the entire system, not just a change of players or managers.

His comments sparked wide controversy. Yet the team's decline after his exit and the revolving door of managers revealed that the crisis was never tied to a single player's name.

Then there's Portugal. This is the most sensitive chapter in Ronaldo's story, his name bound up with the greatest achievements of the current generation, the player who carried the weight of leadership and results for more than two decades.

Before his era, Portugal had won neither the European Championship nor the UEFA Nations League. Then came the generation he led, claiming Euro 2016 and the Nations League twice, in 2019 and 2025.

Individually, Ronaldo closed his international career on 234 matches and 146 goals. He is the most-capped player and the top scorer in the history of national teams, his journey with Portugal spanning 23 years, from his debut in 2003 to his retirement announcement on 5 November 2026.

The numbers tell only part of it. He built a competitive identity for a team that came to be expected to chase titles year after year.

Jorge Jesus and the current generation now face a different test, with the era of the man who absorbed so much of the spotlight and the pressure over.

Pinning Portugal's failures on Ronaldo alone would not be fair, and treating his departure as a guarantee of the group's success would make no sense either. But the next stage will show just how far the team can hold its standing without its historic leader.