Paul Rouse: Ronaldo's unwillingness to accept decline has sucked the joy out of his last days

To look at Cristiano Ronaldo now is to look at a man who seems to be struggling to accept the way things have changed.

Thu, 20 Oct, 2022 - 15:39

The best thing about the Olympia Theatre in Dublin is that there is absolutely nowhere to hide. There’s a crowd standing right in front of you, and climbing above that crowd are balconeyed rows of seats and boxes in a style familiar since the late 19th century.

A thousand people – and more – sloping down towards the stage, waiting to be entertained, looking for a night.

You can either play, or you can’t play.

In the Olympia, Paul Weller doesn’t want to hide. He wants to entertain, wants to give you the night. He stands in the middle of the stage, his band all around him, and he starts to play.

There is smoke and lights and all the magic of the show. But that doesn’t matter. There is a man and a guitar and his band and music and words.

And he can really play.

Energy is impossible to describe, it is a feeling, something that cannot be reduced to words. It is also something authentic, something that cannot be disguised or denied. And Paul Weller brings energy.

But of course as an explanation for how music makes you feel, energy is a dismal answer.

This is not a question of being profound or of trying to offer a very particular theoretical discourse.

Instead, it is an attempt to ask why it is being at a concert given in 2022 by a 64-year-old man whose greatest days are considered to have been in the 1970s and 1980s, should be so brilliant.

What is it about Paul Weller that allows him defy time and be celebrated as such a star? This is a man who was born in 1958 and whose initial stardom was as a member of The Jam in the 1970s.

Part of it is that he has surrounded himself with brilliant musicians and he has the great gift of being willing to share the stage with them – he is for sure the centre of everything, but room has been made for others to share the applause.

Part of it also is that his voice is still incredible; indeed, it could be claimed that it has never sounded better.

It is in this capacity to defy time that great musicians are fundamentally different to great sportsmen and women. The physical demands of elite sport mean that, even as the greatest are in their peak years, the sands are draining through the egg-timer. The timeframe of opportunity is incredibly small.

There is a very limited range of exceptions. Jockeys, for example – there are individuals who have returned decade after decade. Lester Piggott won major races in Britain between the early 1950s and early 1990s.

Paul Weller performs at the Prostate Cancer UK Presents: Raise The Roof concert at Royal Albert Hall on June 22, 2022 in London, England. (Photo by Joe Maher/Getty Images)

But across almost all the remainder of the sporting world, such longevity is simply not an option.

Stopping competing at the very highest level is clearly exceptionally difficult for those who love their sport. The two greatest modern careers in tennis are those of Serena Williams and Roger Federer. When both retired this year, the raw emotion in their farewell speeches was undeniable. It was hard to watch the tears that were shed.

Both had careers that were long and distinguished and undoubtedly fulfilling in terms of all that they won. But to lose something so fulfilling, so fundamental to an identity, throws a huge challenge into a life.

There is now a growing literature studying the impact on the mental health of sportspeople who retire. It is already clear that there is an increased prevalence of depression in that cohort.

Stripped of a formal calendar of play that has shaped the span of adulthood, the tendency to drift into unhealthy habits is widespread. Each person’s experience of this is unique unto themselves, of course, but a common feeling is of a hollowness, a sense of loss, and an aching desire to be able still to play. Even many years after finishing up, this is a feeling that can grab hold of people at the most surprising of moments.

The knowledge that the end is coming is something that ordinarily plays out in public, and does so in increments. There are very few retirements which take sport by surprise – in the way that, for example, Eric Cantona managed.

Mostly, though, it’s the product of a long decline.

What does it mean when you cannot all the time be the way you would like to be?

How do you compensate for the space that exists between the way things once were and the brutal reality of time and the way it destroys everything?

The answer lies, at least in part, with an acceptance of the futility of trying to recreate the past as some sort of immutable present. This is something evidently unattainable.

The great problem is that there are those who cannot see that or accept it. It is in this space where all joy is stripped out of the last days of a career. To look at Cristiano Ronaldo now is to look at a man who seems to be struggling to accept the way things have changed. Against Tottenham on Wednesday night, he sadly left the stage before the gig was done.

There is no defending the selfishness of that act. But there is something incredibly admirable about this raging against time, against the erosion of greatness. He was an extraordinary player and is still an excellent one. But he does not want to be just an excellent one and cannot seem to accept it. In essence, the mentality that drove him to become one of the greatest players of all time is precisely the mentality that is eating away at him now.

Late in the night in the Olympia, somewhere at the end of the second encore, Paul Weller opens his shoulders. He has the electric guitar and the whole room is in his thrall.

The first chords ring out and then the first words of 'That’s Entertainment', a song he first sang in 1980:

“A police car and a screaming siren

Pneumatic drill and ripped-up concrete

A baby wailing, stray dog howling

The screech of brakes and lamp light blinking.”

In every corner of every floor in the Olympia, people are driven a small bit wild. They are driven that way, of course, because they want to be. Past and present are conjoined. The drive of the drums and the guitars, and the power of the desires of the crowd, push the song on and on.

Paul Weller knows he has the place. He sings: “I tell ya, that's entertainment, that's entertainment”.

And everyone sings it with him and back to him. It is entertainment. And an awful lot more than that. At least for now.

Paul Rouse is professor of history at University College Dublin.