Make no excuse for keeping us entertained

VIOLINS, hankies and onions at the ready, please, as we pity poor David Pizarro.

After losing 2-0 to Manchester United in the Champions’ League last week, the Roma midfielder made an ill-judged bid for the sympathy vote when, in essence, he accused Cristiano Ronaldo of being too big for his boots.

“He is very arrogant,” whimpered Pizarro. “He does certain spiteful things on the pitch. This is the ugliest thing for a player. In the return leg I will have something to say to him.” And lest we might have thought that Pizarro was talking about diving or some such, Bruno Conti, a 1982 World Cup winner with Italy and now a Roma director, clarified the criticism. “It’s tiresome to see certain things,” he said, “such as making fun of opponents; there are champions who behave differently.”

Well, maybe there are stoical champs who celebrate victory by donning sackcloth and ashes — and good luck to them — but give me the unapologetic entertainers, warts and all, any day. There are good reasons to have reservations about Ronaldo — including that penchant for diving, and the exaggerated air of wounded innocence which usually accompanies it — but for players and former players to knock him for his flamboyant skill suggests that, sometimes, the professionals are the last people you should go to for insights into what makes football the inspiring and beautiful game that it is.

Not that the complaints of Pizarro and Conti are unprecedented. Through the history of the game, there are stories of old pros outraged by the cockiness of youth — and it’s usually when they were on the receiving end of it, dumped on their ample backsides and made to look foolish by a bit of pure cheek. The archetypal yarn is of the grizzled stopper who, having been nutmegged in the first minute by some bobby dazzler, eventually catches up with the tyro and through gritted teeth warns him: “Try that again, son, and I’ll break your bleedin’ leg.”

It’s an old school perspective which found less violent expression in recent remarks by John Giles to this journalist on the occasion of the great man being inducted into Ireland’s sporting Hall Of Fame. I made the mistake of recalling Leeds United’s celebrated 7-0 demolition of Southampton, a Match Of The Day evergreen in which the great Elland Road side of the 70s toyed with their demoralised opponents, running through their full repertoire of training ground tricks and flicks as they bossed the ball and left their reeling victims chasing after shadows. Even Giles himself, I reminded him, almost nonchalantly joined in the cruel fun.

“But only because I was bored,” he shot back. “I actually went over to (manager) Don Revie and told him I wanted to come off. The real enjoyment in a match for me was at the height of the battle. When it really means something. Say, you’re at Liverpool, when it’s no score and it’s a great game and you’re doing your stuff and you know a goal would be really important. Against Southampton, after we’d scored three or four, it was over, it was exhibition stuff. People remember that, which is fair enough,. but it would be one of the least memorable matches from my point of view.”

Perhaps it’s no coincidence that Giles, and beside him on the RTÉ panel, Liam Brady, are among the few commentators in the game who seem to retain serious reservations about Ronaldo. And I would agree with them up to a point. Ronaldo himself would struggle to keep pace with the hype he has generated this season. His 36 goals might appear to leave little room for quibbling but his curate’s egg of a performance against Roma was not the first time that his uncanny ability to find the net has elevated an otherwise pedestrian display to headline level. And what a goal it was — a bold, fully committed, brilliantly timed and powerful header which confirmed that sheer bravery is a comparatively unsung element of his armoury.

And yet I still can’t go along with those already fitting out the 23 year old for inclusion in the all-time Hall Of Fame, alongside Pele, Maradona, Cruyff, Best and Zidane. Or even, closer to home, Roy Keane. With his scoring record, Ronaldo can clearly change the result of a game but Keane was the kind of player who could dictate the whole game from the start.

There is also a legitimate argument United would be hurt more by the loss of Wayne Rooney than Ronaldo.

Yet, here again, between the professional and the public points of view, there is a gulf which probably owes much to the fact that the former are paid to do what they do while the latter pay to see them do it. Keane may have been the complete footballer but, unlike Ronaldo, he wasn’t the kind of talent whose presence on the ball instinctively moved you to the edge of your seat. Keane inspired admiration, even awe; Ronaldo appeals to our taste for the sensational. And the very greatest — Pele, Maradona and Best — had it all.

So was Pele showing disrespect to his fellow professionals when, in Mexico in 1970, he outrageously dummied the Uruguayan goalkeeper or attempted to lob his Czech counterpart from the halfway line? Hardly. Ronaldo might have a long way to go before he can even be mentioned in the same breath as ‘El Rei’ but only bad losers and old farts could seriously believe that the kid’s stepovers overstep the mark.

Winning is important but there will always be winners. The day sheer entertainment goes out of football is the day the game will die.