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If I were Sir Alex Ferguson or his American paymasters, I would sell him.
The contradiction might appear stupid, but so is the situation in which a team player toys with the European champions.
Real Madrid have, as usual, shamelessly exploited their newspaper influence to turn Ronaldo's head and his agent's bank balance.
Ronaldo is the full package: He's tall, dark and handsome, his feet are the smartest in the business, and his head for heights in the penalty box not bad either.
United plucked the teenage model out of Sporting Lisbon, and now, surprise, surprise, Real Madrid covet the finished article. The figures bandied around by Marca, a newspaper often acting as Madrid's mouthpiece, are obscene.
They speak of 100 million euros (S$211 million) to Man U, and £15 million (S$40 million) a year to Ronaldo, to do in Real white what he's been doing in red. That represents a five-fold profit on what United paid for the boy from Madeira five years ago.
United turned a fragile youth into a player who shares the ball once in a while with other stars. But the sheer ability is either what God, or Ronaldo's mother and father made him.
Why would Man U part with a player they hold on contract? Because if he wants to go, if his heart is really in another place, he's a bad apple in the camp.
Long ago, Joe Mercer, then managing Manchester City and formerly England, said of George Best: 'Genius is great when it's on song, when it goes off, it contaminates.'
I do not pretend to be privy to what Ronaldo and his agent, Jorge Mendes, are playing at. The Portuguese - a winger who scored 42 goals last season - allegedly told Terra, a Brazilian website that speaks his tongue:
'I want to play for Real Madrid, but only if it is true they are eager to pay me and Man U what they have been saying they will. However, that does not depend on me.'
Asked to explain, he pulled down the shutters and said that Euro 2008 is all he will speak of. 'It's important to send a message,' he concluded. 'From now on, I will not talk again about this until the end of the Euro.'
Impasse. United say he is going nowhere. Madrid's president says he accepts that, and according to Sir Alex, Ronaldo can 'rot in the stands' rather than be sold to the enemy.
It is a side issue that Ronaldo's body and soul ought right now to be exclusively tuned to helping his country win something bigger than it has in its history.
It is speculation, nothing more, that his agent's game is trying to squeeze image rights - the millions on endorsements and shirt sales - that United presume to be calculated in the weekly wage. Real Madrid often share that with the big stars.
David Beckham was sold to Madrid, as was Ruud van Nistelrooy, only because 'Sir' decided he's had the best of them.
But Beckham brazenly milked that move for his image rights. And now, he has topped that off in a Californian backwater paying him even more millions for the value of his publicity rather than his ability on the pitch.
Ronaldo is not remotely at that stage. He is the best, and he might get better. Yet, is he irreplaceable? Does he carry a team single-handedly?
I'd want to count the miles run by Carlos Tevez, Wayne Rooney and Park Ji Sung before I answered that. And I would question whether they will do it so wholeheartedly again, and whether Ronaldo will ever have another season as phenomenal as this.
And with a hundred million anything on offer, I'd ask three questions. If he is unwilling to stay, what will he give next season? What happens if he breaks a leg? Which two or three world-class players might I buy for that 100 million?
If it is true that Cristiano's widowed mum wants her boy playing closer to home, I would understand that. If it is more mercenary, I'd wish him well on the greener grass of the Bernabeu.
But if it is just about haggling over image rights, I would quickly call the bluff of Mendes and tell him: 'We love your client, but we have a team here that he must want to play for.
'We are not Real Madrid, we are better than that.'
