According to reports, Nani frequently contacts Ronaldo for help and advice on how to improve his game.

Nani

Seems a bit odd when he has the wing-wizard himself, Ryan Giggs, at the same training ground every day but there you go.

Nani has started this season looking better than previous seasons and has been given plenty of playing minutes in order to strut his stuff. However, he remains a frustrating player to watch. He has all the flicks, tricks and ability on the ball but his final ball has been letting him down.

Nani strikes me as a player who, as a kid, was probably much better than the kids he would play against. He could probably beat defenders at will with a dribble, a bit of pace or a fancy bit of footworkl. As a result, he doesn’t seem to have ever learned to cross the ball into the box – why would he? The ball was probably always better at his feet than any of his young team-mates.

However, now he is in the big time, defenders are bigger, stronger, more savvy to the tricks that might have worked for him in years gone by.

Just a theory…

You may remember when Ronaldo first arrived at Manchester United. We were all enthralled by his wonderful dribbling skills and the thirty stepovers but we quickly became a bit bored of those things when we realised that there was little substance behind the eye-candy.

His final ball was, more often than not, extremely disappointing. Move after move would start promisingly, he would get himself into a good position and then… nothing.

This is where Nani now finds himself.

Quite what happened to Ronaldo after his first three seasons to turn him into the world beater of his second three season is hard to say as an outsider. He definitely got bigger and stronger. He obviously got a bit older and more experienced. His self-belief went through the roof.

Whatever you say about Ronaldo, you cannot say that he lacks confidence.

Nani appears to be suffering a crisis of confidence at the moment. He will be aware that this, his third season at United, is a big season for him. It could well be make or break time for him.

You might say that playing in such a pressurised situation is hardly going to help but this is what playing for Manchester United is all about. It is no place for shrinking violets. Every time you pull on that shirt, you are playing for your place in the team. If the bad performances start to outweigh the good performances then you’ll find yourself on the way out – whoever you are.

It seems also that some of Nani’s team-mates are also starting to lose a bit of faith in him which cannot be a good sign. Watch Dimitar Berbatov whenever he is playing with Nani, you can probably count the number of times he passes to him on the fingers of a one-fingered man. When Nani makes a mess of a cross or a pass, Berby looks absolutely disgusted.

It’s a shame because there is clearly a lot of quality to Nani but bringing the best out of him is not proving easy.

When Giggs plays a ball into the box, it is usually quality. When Nani plays a ball into the box, you hope more than expect that it will be a good one.

The main difference between Ronaldo and Nani appears to me that Ronaldo is able to fuel himself with belief from within. Nani appears to look outside for support.

A manager who subs him, opposition fans who sing “You’re not as good as Ronaldo” and team mates who treat him with near contempt doesn’t seem to be a fertile breeding ground for self-confidence to me.

At 22 years of age, there is still time for Nani to come good and if he can turn his fortunes around it will represent a major achievement by the lad.

I, for one, hope he does it.