Cristiano Ronaldo has misread the room as badly as one of the umpteen crosses he has been offside for this season.
For the second month running, his negativity has overshadowed the positivity of a Manchester United win he played no part in. That has been a running theme of United this season: they are better without Ronaldo.
Ronaldo was absent in London and against Aston Villa on Thursday night through illness (United won both). He looked well enough unloading on his manager and club as he held court with Piers Morgan.
Read more: All the fall-out from Ronaldo's chat with Morgan
Whenever the interview was recorded is moot. The timing was as dreadful as one of Ronaldo's runs this season. He cannot play again for United for six weeks (as if he is going to rush back for Burnley in the League Cup) and has left a storm that will not clear any time soon.
Ronaldo knew the first clips would air hours after the floodlights had been switched off at Craven Cottage, where Alejandro Garnacho's winner evoked memories of Ronaldo's pivotal strike at the Putney End 15 years earlier. That is the Ronaldo the United fans will prefer to remember.
At the time of writing, United are loath to directly comment on Ronaldo's incendiary interview. Sources insist it would not temper the euphoric denouement to the victory at Fulham, where the spirit Erik ten Hag has forged between team and supporters was evident again.
In an audience with supporters at the club's Carrington training complex on Wednesday, one from Middleton thanked Ten Hag for instilling fighting spirit back into the club. The players on the pitch at Craven Cottage, whatever their quality, fight, fight, fight for United. Ronaldo doesn't anymore.
The matchgoers back Ten Hag, not Ronaldo. He was not serenaded at Craven Cottage nor at Stamford Bridge three weeks earlier, where he was dropped for refusing to emerge in the win over Tottenham.
United's true supporters are one of the most principled and by far the most supportive Ronaldo has ever encountered in his garlanded career. They have never booed him but he is daring them to.
For many, Ronaldo will be the greatest player they ever see in red. He has enriched supporters' days following the club and they will still cherish the debut against Bolton, the goals at Highbury, the counter-attacking, the free-kicks and Viva Ronaldo on the Moscow metro. Not this latest piece of theatre.
Ronaldo has not been "betrayed". He has not once denied the story in The Sunday Times , written by a reporter renowned for his links to the Gestifute agency run by Ronaldo's agent Jorge Mendes, that was headlined: "Cristiano Ronaldo tells Manchester United: it's time for me to leave".
Ronaldo has since left an Old Trafford friendly he participated in early and skulked down the tunnel before full-time against Tottenham, having refused to come on. If there is betrayal, it is from the player.
To revolt once may be regarded as a misfortune, to do so twice looks like selfishness. If the Tottenham transgression was an aberration, a rush of blood to the head and a misrepresentation of possibly the most professional player to have played the game, what is this?
This was the long-gestated interview Ronaldo promised back on August 17. He commented on a fawning Instagram page he would reveal the "truth" in two weeks. Ie. when the transfer window closed.
Only Ronaldo has been left marooned in Manchester. Mendes hawked Ronaldo across Europe but Chelsea, Bayern Munich, Atletico Madrid, Sporting Lisbon, Napoli and AC Milan failed to offer an exit route.
It was obvious back then Ronaldo would choose Morgan to conduct the interview and that is a misstep. Morgan is disliked by long-time United fans due to his Arsenal allegiance and partisan coverage as the editor of The Daily Mirror during the clubs' rivalry in the late 90s and early 2000s.
A penny also for the thoughts of Ronaldo's surrogate father, Sir Alex Ferguson, who once informed a reporter: "Tell your editor to f--k off to Highbury and stagnate." The editor was Morgan.
As this newspaper revealed at the time, it was Ferguson's intervention that changed Ronaldo's course from the Etihad to Old Trafford that frenzied Friday in August 2021. Both clubs have maintained a vow of silence but Ronaldo at least finally confirmed it.
"I followed my heart," Ronaldo told Morgan. "He (Sir Alex) said to me, ‘It’s impossible for you to come to Manchester City’, and I said, ‘Okay, Boss’."
Ferguson, a manager whose maxim was no player is bigger than the club, is responsible for another mess almost a decade on from heading upstairs in the south stand.
He will doubtless stay mum to protect his ambassadorial salary and row of seats in the directors' box with his named plaque chiselled onto each one. But the power brokers at United need to tell him to stop sticking his oar in.
United confirmed Ronaldo had a "family issue" in the summer that prevented his involvement in the pre-season tour. Some journalists were aware of Ronaldo's daughter's illness and respected the family's privacy.
The club have been supportive of Ronaldo following his belated charge by the Football Association over smashing an Everton fan's phone to the ground. Ten Hag started Ronaldo at Brentford and he recently lined up in four successive games. He captained the club only eight days ago.
Ronaldo has three goals in 16 games, a third of the amount he had tallied this time last year. United have recorded their best results and played their best football without him. He is raging against the dying of the light but this is an unedifying way to go about it.
The light has gone out.
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