Tapping into the Red Devils reported 659 million worldwide fanbase, Lee Clough and a team of social media experts have launched a campaign aimed to buy out the football icon’s Real Madrid contract.

Driven by Twitter and YouTube the www.BringRonaldoHome.org movement has already garnered thousands of pledges to purchase a Ronaldo Manchester United shirt to fund the deal.

Clough, who manufactures footballs, has thrown himself into the project 24/7 and says it’s the first time a crowd-funding platform has been created to underpin a player transfer.

“I couldn’t sit by and let him transfer to some other club and be lost forever,” the Man U diehard told au.fourfourtwo.com from his campaign base in London.

“But if I had known now how complicated it was going to be I would have got my wife to slap me across the face and tell me to stop being an idiot.

“I went into it thinking it’s so crazy it might just actually work and everybody I spoke to said brilliant idea and it just snowballed.”

Aussie media and marketing gurus Ron Ainsbury and Andrew Dent have teamed up to bring the idea to fruition and while no-one is talking funding targets there’s no doubt it will cost a bob or two to snare the 28-year-old superstar. United sold the player for the bargain price of £80 million four years ago.

England-born Clough, who has lived in Australia for the past two decades, flew to the UK for a low-key campaign launch on the weekend. He doesn’t underestimate the enormity of ensuring “the greatest player on the planet comes home.”

To achieve that, www.bringronaldohome.org is asking fans to reach into their pockets for a £10 as a conditional deposit to buy the Ronaldo kit from the club at a price £55. If the campaign doesn’t succeed, the money will be refunded in full. Webpage advertising will be used to cover costs as well as sponsor two charities – WWF and Save the Child.

Clough says the idea had its genesis about six weeks ago after Ronaldo and Manchester United manager Alex Ferguson expressed a desire for the player to return to his old stomping ground where he ruled from 2003 to 2009.

Ferguson has since retired but United’s meeting with Nike officials about raising funds to finance a deal shows a real desire to reunite the Portuguese star with the English Premier League giants.

The team is racing the clock with the transfer window closing at the end of the August but despite the haste of the campaign, this is no fleeting obsession.

As a youngster Clough was a regular at Edgeley Park, the home of Stockport County FC, but an FA cup game between The Hatters and the Red Devils changed his life forever.

“I must have been about 11-years-old and walking up the steps of Old Trafford,” he recalled. “I went over the top and remember, as clear as yesterday, when I saw the grounds for the first time.

“There was nothing to compare, it was just spectacular. I didn’t realise what I’d been missing. I still supported Stockport County but from that day on I was a true-born Red I suppose.”

The 45-year-old has since co-opted his two sons to the cause, naming his firstborn “Ryan” after player Ryan Giggs and nicknaming his second “Scholesy” in honour of Man United’s celebrated one-club man, Paul Scholes.

So is he the real deal? “Who in their right mind would embark upon this if they weren’t?” he said. Still, he’s surprised by level of vitriol aimed at himself and the campaign by opposition fans and those claiming the project is a scam.

“It purely started out of a passion to help Manchester United to get Ronaldo back to Old Trafford - nothing more, nothing less – and I’ve pulled it together. But there’s a hell of lot of sceptics out there.

“It’s come from the heart,” he says, then adds with a laugh, “and tell all the Chelsea fans and Arsenal fans to bugger off and leave me alone.”