The football world has had enough of Ronaldo

Opinion

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 14/04/2023 (878 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

When Cristiano Ronaldo joined Al-Nassr in December, he likely didn’t think he’d be trained by a manager whose most recent first-team experience was in the Croatian second and third divisions.

That’s no knock on Dinko Jeličić, the club’s youth coach, recruited by countryman and sporting director Goran Vućević following stints with Rudeš and Kustošija. Whatever his qualities, the 49-year-old is about to have his world turned upside down by the planet’s most selfish footballer, and one who’s seen the back of seven managers in less than four years.

Naturally, the €400 million committed to Ronaldo by the third-biggest club in Riyadh left little doubt as to who’d really be in charge at Mrsool Park — incidentally the smallest home ground the former Manchester United, Real Madrid and Juventus forward has represented since a very brief spell at Estádio Aurélio Pereira, site of the Sporting CP reserves.

It wasn’t to be Rudi Garcia. At least, not for long.

The kindly, erudite Frenchman, who famously left a pencil for every reporter at his first AS Roma press conference following the Charlie Hebdo shootings (“I wanted to give every journalist a pencil as symbol of freedom,” he remarked at the time.), didn’t even see out a full season in Saudi Arabia. Although, and tellingly, he’d had Al-Nassr atop the table before Ronaldo arrived.

He might’ve even guided Victory (the team’s name in Arabic) to a first title in four seasons and fourth in twenty-eight. Honestly — and paycheque aside — he was probably glad to get the hell out of there. Middle Eastern football might present exciting projects, but there’s simply no enjoyment to be had when Ronaldo is nearby.

That is, of course, unless you happen to sell luxury watches, in which case you know a fool when you see one. Ronaldo’s latest is a €700,000 timepiece decked out with 388 cuts of tsavorite—a gem only found, and rarely at that, in parts of Kenya and Tanzania.

Why do we know this? Because the Portugal captain and partner Georgina Rodríguez ensure we know absolutely everything about their many luxuries. And they’re impossible to escape if you want to follow football in the newspaper, on the web and on social media. Algorithms require that after reading a post about Real Madrid-Chelsea, for example, you’re shown a picture of a 17-room flat in the Kingdom Tower Four Seasons.

“Why am I seeing this? It’s revoltingly gaudy.”

Groan.

“Oh, for goodness sake!”

Hardly the reaction an all-time great should inspire.

Not that there’s anything approaching a “G.O.A.T” debate, but how many people outside the Paris Saint-Germain super-orbit could cite Lionel Messi’s remuneration without first at least checking Google, just to be sure?

Of course, it’s inevitable that we know quite a bit about celebrities who interest us, unless that celebrity happens to be Taylor Swift. But she, like almost every famous person in the 21st century (though she does it best), understands how and when to release content for public consumption. Fans can be ravenous, at least at first, but if you keep chucking treats at them — on the daily — they’ll soon be bored of you, even sick to the stomach.

But for the dwindling gangs of fan-bruhs, football is sick of Ronaldo. And even they, who defended him amidst credible rape allegations, are surely losing enthusiasm. The “I really just care about the football” argument tends to ring hollow when even the football, which certainly did achieve extraordinary greatness, has been reduced to ruining people’s careers and celebrating hat-tricks in front of 13,000 people like you’ve just won every World Cup, ever.

And “as for the football,” if we’re somehow able to move everything else off to the side (we can’t), we are absolutely left with a career whose peers number on one hand, and probably less a thumb. And maybe a pinkie finger.

It’s one of those rare things we don’t often consider regarding Ronaldo, but to regain the Ballon d’Or after Messi had won it four times in a row, and to do it at the age of 28, and to then win another three, is one of the more amazing narratives in the history of sport. Here was an athlete who elevated his game to match, and then surpass for a time, the greatest footballer who’s ever lived.

It’s also a narrative that football, itself, creates, as it requires more than a protagonist to actually exist as a story. Ronaldo, himself, cannot tell it.

“Cristiano, your mid-career ascension was spectacular, perhaps unparalleled.”

“OK, but look at this watch!”

If you’re not overcompensating, have nothing to hide and are comfortable with the legacy you’re in the process of leaving, you’ll probably not be all that fearful of how you’re perceived, the content you post and items you flaunt. On the other hand, if paranoia pushes you to shove your self-airbrushed image in everybody’s face, there’s likely something else going on that’s not about football, an audience you’re reaching that’s not football fans.

At that point — and we’re well past it — fans stop caring. They’re either bored or exhausted or fed up or disappointed, or all of the above. It’s sad. This wind-down of a remarkable career is really, really sad.

Cristiano Ronaldo, meet Dinko Jeličić. You don’t deserve him.

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