Ron will rue solo runs
He still lags behind the likes of Lady Gaga on Facebook (37 million fans to 45 million), but then Lady Gaga occasionally says something for her fans to think about.
In terms of the ratio of Facebook fans to interesting pronouncements, Ronaldo leads the world.
He speaks three languages and is not quotable in any of them. Maybe his most famous remark was his reply when asked in September why fans in Zagreb had booed him throughout a game: “I think that because I am rich, good-looking and a great footballer people are envious of me.” Was that a joke, or a glimpse into a mind utterly devoid of self-awareness? Ronaldo doesn’t explain.
Unlike Xavi, who talks about the game with a frenetic, perceptive intelligence that reflects his playing style, Ronaldo is almost totally non-verbal. We have to work him out from what he shows us on the pitch.
That can be tricky too, because Ronaldo is so much better than almost everyone with whom he shares the pitch. He is associated with strutting arrogance and physical vanity, but remember he is one of the finest athletes in the game and he is probably the best power player of all time. The best power player of all time is not going to shuffle around with his head bowed and his shoulders hunched; Ronaldo’s swagger is appropriate to his status and his nature.
He briefly became unpopular in England when he winked to the Portugal bench after Wayne Rooney was sent off in the 2006 World Cup. That was actually one of his most humanising moments because it demonstrated an ordinary low cunning with which we could all empathise.
Other Ronaldo moments are more mysterious. What was going through his head at the end of the Champions League final in Moscow, when Anderson’s penalty won the shootout and all the United players ran to celebrate with their team-mate — all except Ronaldo, who turned away and sank to the grass in tears?
What that instant revealed was an unusual degree of self-absorption. When the ordinary player’s instinct was to jump into a pile with everyone else, Ronaldo wanted to be alone.
Alex Ferguson tried to make Ronaldo feel like part of a family at Manchester United, speaking of him more fondly than of any other player he’s managed. Yet Ronaldo was never cut out to be Ferguson’s surrogate son. He’s a star and an arch-individualist who wants to be out on his own. He never seemed happier than on the night he was unveiled as Real Madrid’s new world record signing, when he jogged down a catwalk juggling a ball with no team-mates there to dilute the love pouring down from the stands.
If Ronaldo had been a tennis player, we might never have heard of Rafael Nadal. But football is not an individual sport. The irony of Ronaldo that his greatest strength — his hunger to be recognised as the best in the world — is also the tragic flaw that stops him from actually being the best. A footballer who doesn’t understand it’s a team game is only half the player he could be.
Ronaldo is so good that his flaw only becomes evident when he is sharing a pitch with his nemesis, Lionel Messi. As sporting rivalries go, Ronaldo-Messi is a quiet one, unlikely ever to break into open Ali/Frazier-style warfare. The closest it’s ever come was after the Champions League semi-final last April, when Ronaldo dismissed Messi’s two goals at the Bernabeu with outlandish bad grace: “It’s easier against 10 men. I’d like to play against 10 men too, like he does.”
The truth is that Messi plays with 10 other men, while Ronaldo thinks he’s out there by himself, and that’s what makes the difference between them. It was all there in the game on Saturday night. Ronaldo only knows one way. He wants to be the one who shoots, who scores, whose picture is on the front page of Marca. He had a nightmare. He missed a chance at 1-0 when a little pass to Angel di Maria would almost certainly have made it 2-0. He missed another at 1-2, seconds before Barcelona’s killer third goal. He battered free-kicks vainly against the wall. He kept trying the same things and nothing worked.
Because Messi plays with and for his team-mates the game in his head contains many more possibilities. If the first thing he tries doesn’t work, he tries something else. In the first 20 minutes he hung around up front and didn’t see much of the ball, so he decided to adapt, to attack by retreating. He went back to his own half, got the ball, dribbled past three players and gave it to Sanchez for the equaliser. Maybe Ronaldo would have had the ability to execute the dribble, but the idea would never have occurred to him. Messi created Barcelona’s third by again dropping deep and playing a team-mate into space. Messi is happy to make things happen, where Ronaldo only wants to finish things off.
Ronaldo made Marca anyway, a big picture, just himself and his arch-nemesis. He was getting to his feet as Messi walked past, and the photographer had snapped the best power player of all time down on bended knee. That’s not where Ronaldo ought to be, but as long as he’s taking on Messi one against 11, it’s where he’s going to stay.
