As Manchester United supporters brace themselves for Cristiano Ronaldo to leave the club for a second time, there may be a sense of deja vu around the forward.
Ronaldo has told the club he wants to leave after failing to qualify for the Champions League, with Chelsea and Paris Saint-Germain among the potential destinations. Last season's top scorer has not joined his teammates in Thailand for their pre-season tour, with family reasons keeping him in Europe, but it remains to be seen whether he has played his last game in United colours.
Real Madrid was the destination 12 years ago, with Ronaldo joining the Spanish giants in an £80m move. And, just like this year, there was plenty of bad blood around the move before it was finally and officially confirmed in July 2009.
Real Madrid's interest in Ronaldo was hardly brand new information for United in 2009. The idea of a move to La Liga had been floated as early as 2007, while in 2008 - amid a standout season which ended with Ronaldo and United winning the Champions League - the noises got louder.
"I’ve said millions of times that I would love to play in Spain. But it’s one thing to dream and another thing for it to be reality,” Ronaldo said at the time. “I know Real Madrid like how I play and I know that other teams in Spain like my game as well, so that’s good – but I’m happy here.”
While other managers might have kept their nose out of matters, Alex Ferguson was never the kind to do that. Indeed, the United boss took aim at Los Blancos in a big way, even dredging up the club's one-time links with Generalissimo Franco.
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"You get used to this, Madrid's behaviour on these things," Ferguson said. "I read about [Madrid president Ramon] Calderon making the great statement that slavery was abolished many, many years ago.
"Well, did they tell Franco that? Jesus Christ! Eh, give me a break! It doesn't matter which player it is, the ones you want to keep, you have to work hard to keep. In this modern day, that's a fact.
"Do you not think we've had much interest from the big clubs in Europe about our best players? Of course we have, but they don't get into the nonsense Real get into.
"They've no moral issues at all. They think that they can ride roughshod over everyone, but they won't with us."
Ferguson had insisted previous sales to Madrid happened because United "wanted to," rather than being forced to. David Beckham joined Los Blancos in 2003, and Ruud van Nistelrooy moved there in 2006, but neither was as indispensable to United as Ronaldo was in 2008.
His 42 goals that season had included 31 in the league - the highest ever tally for a United player - and three of United's seven in the Champions League knockout staged. Ferguson knew how tough it would be to replace someone like that, and he was determined to stand firm.
He would later pledge "not to give in to those people". However, 12 months later, things had begun to change.
For starters, it wasn't still Calderon at the helm in 2009. While the outgoing president claimed he had a deal in place for Ronaldo a month before his January 2009 exit, it was successor Florentino Perez who unveiled the Portugal star.
Indeed, in January 2009, Ronaldo had insisted "What people are saying now [about an agreement with Madrid] is not true." Dealings with "those people," had seemingly not progressed after all, but that would change at the end of the season.
Incidentally, the final season of Ronaldo's first United stint saw him score 18 league goals - the same number as in 2021-22. Apart from that, though, the situation now is very different.
Back in 2009, United had some pulling power and were able to at least secure a substantial transfer fee for Ronaldo. Not that they spent the money right away, of course, with Michael Owen and Gabriel Obertan hardly the most thrilling attacking arrivals in contrast to what they had lost.
This time, though, any new recruits may well arrive with far more excitement around them than the man they're replacing. Ronaldo's return was huge for United, and it's not like he didn't deliver on the pitch, but there's a sense from some that, in retrospect, it might not have been a net positive.
As for refusing to deal with certain suitors? Given Ronaldo's age, wages and stance on an exit, one imagines they won't have the luxury of being too fussy this time around.
