At times this summer Sir Alex Ferguson has been accused of fiddling while his outstanding player burns his bridges at Manchester United, but last night came reports of a dash to Lisbon to persuade Cristiano Ronaldo to drop his ambition to join Real Madrid.

Unconfirmed reports from Portugal emerged while Ferguson was on a flight to South Africa for United’s pre-season tour, but what is certain is that the manager remains convinced that Ronaldo will stay at Old Trafford for at least another season.

According to RTP, the Portuguese television station, Ferguson met Ronaldo in Lisbon on Monday. That was known to have been the Scot’s intention, but at the weekend he encouraged the belief that a busy schedule had forced him to abandon that plan. Having long insisted that the debate over Ronaldo’s future was an irrelevance, Ferguson now appears to have risen to the challenge of battling to persuade him that his future lies in Manchester, rather than Madrid.

He may well succeed in doing so in the short term, but the likelihood remains that the Portugal forward will get his wish to join Real in the not-too-distant future.

An ankle injury, which required surgery 11 days ago, ruled Ronaldo out of the tour to South Africa — and potentially out of the opening two months of the new season — but it has not stopped the 23-year-old flying to Los Angeles this week to attend a sports awards ceremony.

While there, he is understood to be taking advice from Hollywood agents on how best to exploit his image, which he and his representatives believe can be best achieved by playing in the white shirt of Real, where Zinédine Zidane, David Beckham and others have raised their global profile.

Another absentee from United’s tour is Owen Hargreaves. While the majority of his team-mates will arrive in Cape Town this morning for the start of the ten-day visit, the England midfield player has stayed behind to receive intensive treatment on the tendinitis in a knee that limited him to 23 starts last season after his £20.2 million move from Bayern Munich.

Hargreaves revealed in April that he may never be completely free of the problem and, after the departure of Carlos Queiroz as assistant manager last week and continuing uncertainty over Ronaldo’s future, it is a worry that Ferguson could do without.

The United manager struck an optimistic note, though, yesterday. “It was apparent as soon as he came back to training,” he said. “Some people get these things. Maybe restarting training on firm ground brings it on, or maybe it is just an inherent problem. We are trying to sort it out with injections. That is what we did last November and it worked. Hopefully these ones work and by the time we come back from South Africa he should be OK.”

United are expected to make an improved bid for Dimitar Berbatov in the coming days after having an opening £20.5 million offer rejected by Tottenham Hotspur. Ferguson, who has confirmed that a bid had been made for a player “who would enhance us a great deal”, is confident that he will land the Bulgaria forward, although United are said to be reluctant to go higher than £24 million.

Berbatov’s arrival would almost certainly signal the end of Louis Saha’s tenure at Old Trafford. Saha is back home in France having treatment on a knee problem that has ruled him out of United’s tour and, having lost patience with the striker’s continual injury problems, Ferguson will listen to offers.

Other absentees from the tour include Nani, Edwin van der Sar and Patrice Evra, who played in Euro 2008, and Anderson, who has been competing in World Cup qualifying matches for Brazil, but Gary Neville has travelled and is eager to prove his fitness, having played just nine minutes of first-team football in 16 months after a succession of injuries.