Boasting just part of game for Ronaldo

Can we talk about boasting?

I ask because of the quotes floating around from the one and only Cristiano Ronaldo in the last couple of days. If you didn’t see them, here’s a sense of the general theme just to be going on with . ..

“I don’t see anyone better than me,” Ronaldo is reported as saying. “No player does things that I cannot do myself, but I see things others can’t do. There’s no more complete player than me. I’m the best player in history — in the good and the bad moments.”

Leave to one side the near-inevitable ‘lost in translation’ backtracking that looms on the horizon, even though the quotes appeared in the reputable France Football. If it were carried in a papal encyclical and signed in blood by the Pope you’d still expect the me-never-said-that defence, but that needn’t detain us here.

What interests me, among other aspects of this assertion, is the attitude towards the man proclaiming himself the greatest of all time. Not the reflexive pointing at other players’ achievements, which seems all too predictable and boring, nor whether Ronaldo’s personality undercuts his credibility, which is just as predictable and etc.

The dismissal of any possibility of a sense of irony on Ronaldo’s part caught my eye, though — as though possessing abdominal muscles like his excludes any chance of a sense of humour. It’s as if the deal you make at the midnight crossroads is mastery of the blues guitar/a mid-section that looks carved from marble . . . or having the wit to be self-deprecating. But not both.

Is it a broader cultural issue — that our poor puny brains can’t recognise the contradictory drives of Ronaldo-as-player and Ronaldo-as-ironist?

If so, then the sense persists that specialising is the key element above all, the dedication to one purpose. As a consequence, having the kind of single-minded commitment to one endeavour which Ronaldo possesses disqualifies irony, because, well, that’s what being single-minded means: having a single thing in mind. So if you ask an athlete to buy into the self-fulfilling prophecy of self-improvement, there isn’t room left over for the kind of doubt that articulates itself in good humour.

Or self-awareness of any kind, perhaps. A few years ago I spoke to a rugby international who articulated perfectly the demand for excellence: not a stirring speech or flash of inspiration — but the devotion to mechanical repetition, over and over. And over and over. And over.

Building the kind of muscle memory that’s generated by the (now much-queried) ten thousand hours of practice leaves little time for reflection. Is that such a bad thing for a sportsperson? Perhaps not. Ronaldo’s breezy self-assertion smacks a bit of pop psychology’s positive reinforcement, a mantra ossified by constant repetition — no doubt in a platinum-framed bathroom mirror every morning.

At another level, however, I like to believe Ronaldo is having a bit of a laugh on us.

That in the morning, as he goes into the particular chamber of his Madrid mansion dedicated solely to hair product and idly trails a hand in the vat of Veet nearest the door, he wonders how best he can needle the earnest with a proclamation of his own greatness, and considers which of his solid-gold armchairs would offer the best view of the social media discussion arising from declaring his own genius.

Because of all that, if the great man does use the old ‘what I really mean to say was . . .’ gambit, I’ll be very disappointed.

More in his line to double down and say ‘it ain’t boasting if you can do it’. If he comes through with that kind of follow-up I’m on his side. In the good and bad moments.

Great language isn’t enough without great reporting

Really enjoyed a Longreads piece on David Foster Wallace recently by Josh Roland.

I’ve written about Wallace here before, and many people have cited his piece about Roger Federer (“Roger Federer As Religious Experience”) as an all-time classic, so it was interesting to see writers like Jeff Sharlet criticise Wallace, saying the Federer piece: “ . . . is built around what I find a banal Religious Studies 101 idea.”

Yes, there’s some great language. But great language isn’t enough without great reporting. And I just don’t see Wallace as ever very interested in reporting.”

I sat up and took particular notice of John Jeremiah Sullivan’s views of Wallace, having spoken to Sullivan a few years ago for this paper.

When Sharlet suggests Wallace may be responsible for the “turn towards the baroque” you see in male literary journalists, Sullivan says: “There were a lot of those sportswriters — and probably writers in other sections of the paper too, that I wasn’t paying as close of attention to — they thought of themselves as kind of an army of junior gonzo reporters.

“Like, ‘we were gonna have fun with [it]!’ That had always been there in the sports writing world to some extent, in fact, it’s probably where the original Gonzo impulse—that Gonzo impulse definitely drew on the self-identifying hack journalist.

And that goes all the way back to Grub Street.” I’d lean towards Sharlet’s view — a lot of the high-end sports feature writing you read owes something to Wallace.

It’s well worth checking out the piece and making up your own mind, though.

Us Moynihans must stick together

Getting into the golf again.

Why, you ask? Because of the growing proliferation of headlines such as “Moynihan: I’m only a couple of shots from where I want to be”, or “Moynihan taking aggressive approach at Q-School”, or even “Moynihan misses cut in Joburg Open but hails great year”.

Great to be greeted in the morning by your surname in capitals, your brilliance underwritten.

Clearly my namesake Gavin is flying the flag for us all on the fairways (is that the word?) of the world, and boosting the self-esteem of Moynihans everywhere as he does so.

Drive it on, Gav: we’re all in your corner.