How Ronaldo’s Transfer To Manchester United Broke The Internet

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Paris Saint Germain's Lionel Messi poses with a shirt on the pitch after the press conference.

REUTERS/Sarah Meyssonnier

One would have to be living under a rock in the past 24 hours to not have an inkling of knowledge that Cristiano Ronaldo is returning to Manchester United.

The Portuguese superstar’s quick transfer choice sent ripples across the globe with the army of Red Devils across the globe making their joy known on all platforms possible. In fact, such was the excitement and hype around the frankly unexpected announcement, it truly broke the internet.

To put one simple and yet controversial feat of comparison, the official announcement from United garnered more likes and retweets than Lionel Messi’s move to PSG, another seemingly unexpected transfer from this summer.

At the time of writing this article, United’s announcement had nearly 2 million likes and over half a million retweets whilst PSG’s confirmation of Messi’s transfer commanded under a million likes and a paltry 193.5 thousand retweets respectively.

 

Next, United’s website apparently could not handle the large volume of supporters who were clicking on the link to garner further details, with multiple reports confirming that the club’s official site crashed after the announcement was made.

Apart from the above, the Twitter trends and the constant plastering of Ronaldo’s face onto well-photoshopped jerseys did the rounds on several platforms as fans celebrated what has been rumoured and become a staple of transfer windows all too often and yet only materialized when they least expected it.

In particular, such a triumphant response comes at the end of an emotional rollercoaster of a day for United supporters as they were first shocked with the news that Ronaldo was mulling a move to their bitter arch-rivals Manchester City.

From pitchforks and mobs to internet joy, this transfer has truly cemented this window as one that will be remembered fondly for quite a while.