At Euro 2020, Cristiano Ronaldo recaptures lightning in a bottle

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This article was published 22/06/2021 (1908 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Of all people, Cristiano Ronaldo would have respected the hustle.

A man whose body appears to be 90 per cent fast-twitch muscle fibres and 10 per cent whatever fibres you use when preening like a show pony has built a whole lot of his historic career on reaction times.

So if he’d perused any of the advertising bibles these past few days and saw Ikea saluted for reinforcing its reputation as the king of reactive marketing, Ronaldo may have nodded a respecting nod. And then got his lawyers on the phone to see if there was a cut in it for him.

The Swedish masters of flat-pack had jumped on the mini-drama of Ronaldo’s swipe at Coca-Cola in the opening week of Euro 2020 — when the striker’s removal of two Coke bottles from a press conference dais was linked to billion-dollar fluctuations in the company’s share value (in fact a very regular occurrence) — to unveil their newest product: a regular Ikea reusable drinking bottle, but this time labelled “for water only.” It was called Cristiano.

Portugal goes into Wednesday’s final day of the group stages of Euro 2020 staring at elimination. Lose to world champion France in Budapest and Portugal’s defence of its continental crown may be over before it began. It’s all a predicament their captain is likely relishing. At 36, Ronaldo’s appetite for defying the odds and the precedents and the doubters remains utterly voracious, matched only perhaps by his ravenous hunger for endorsement dollars.

This summer would appear to be a perfect meeting of both of those passions. Were any other seminal player at risk of being knocked out of a major championship at an age so commonly seen as the twilight of a career, forests would be felled for pre-emptive eulogies. But we already know this won’t be Ronaldo’s last. He is adamant that he will continue through to the 2022 World Cup in Qatar, when he’ll be just shy of his 38th birthday.

Already one of the planet’s richest athletes, Ronaldo’s relentless longevity serves to make him ever more lucrative.

“My body is my weapon,” he said in early June, apparently. “To be the best, you need the best recovery.”

The quotes were contained in a press release, hence the reticence to take them as gospel. They were accompanied by a 60-second advertisement that is pure, unfiltered Ronaldo. Long, lingering close-ups of him on a treadmill, then plunging into an ice bath in a room with floor-to-ceiling views of Lake Como, or somewhere equally extortionately priced, and shots of him lying on a bed in the briefest of briefs. Most important, there were many angles of him using a Theragun, a hand-held massage therapy device and system that had already partnered with all-conquering English champion Manchester City. Just another commercial link-up for a man who made an eye-watering $47 million (U.S.) last year through endorsements with the likes of Nike, Tag Heuer and Herbalife.

The vibration therapy, it seems, is working. Ronaldo has scored three times in Portugal’s two games, breaking records along the way (all-time Euros scorer) with more marks in his sights (all-time international scorer). His opener against Germany on Saturday defied assumptions that he was transitioning to more of a static poacher role as he sprinted the full length of the pitch in 14 seconds to round off a breathtaking break. Good vibrations.

“(He is) a source of inspiration for everyone,” French striker Antoine Griezmann said ahead of Wednesday’s Group F meeting. “It is extraordinary what he is doing at 36 years old. He is a complete player, an example for all young and old.”

Ronaldo’s lifestyle regimen occupies an almost whispered space of rumour and myth, but as evidenced by the Coke kerfuffle, diet is a big part of the recovery program. He avoids sugary drinks, alcohol and red meat. Reportedly, he eats six meals daily and takes as many as five 90-minute naps a day. Insider recently had one of its reporters give it a go and came back with the delightful headline: “I ate like Cristiano Ronaldo for a week. By the end I was totally sick of cooking and so full I could barely work out.”

But it works for Ronaldo, whose scorching international scoring pace has doubled since he turned 30: 52 goals in 118 games before; 55 in 59 since. Whether that longevity and the huge cultural and tactical space he takes up works for a Portugal team rich with other attacking and creative talents remains up for debate, one that will be only more fevered should they be eliminated by the French.

It can be a fool’s errand to read too deeply into a tournament before it’s had its decisive moments, to divine wider trends from early group stages. And yet that’s never stopped us before.

The fact that Ronaldo’s impact has been so pronounced after a club season with Juventus widely seen as one of his most underwhelming is noteworthy. That it coincides with other late-30s players excelling is equally so: the Italian defensive pairing of Giorgio Chiellini and Leonardo Bonucci were seen by some as much too old a tandem for this tournament yet, Italy has progressed with a perfect record of three wins and three clean sheets (Chiellini missing the final group game).

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It likely hasn’t escaped the attention of Canadian men’s manager John Herdman, whose own captain Atiba Hutchinson (evergreen at 38) is one of the oldest in the international game, that fully 21 of the 24 captains at Euro 2020 are over 30. The average age among that cohort is north of 33. Eight teams have captains over 35, double the amount at Euro 2016. The youngest squad at the tournament was undoubtedly its worst performer: Turkey. The next in line, England and Spain, have been particularly underwhelming.

All of this is happening at a time when the top level of the club game has become no country for old men. Sports science and analytics-obsessed Liverpool balked at extending pivotal midfielder Gini Wijnaldum’s contract this summer because he had reached 30. The Dutch captain is Euro 2020’s top scorer and arguably best performer so far.

The more pedestrian pace of the international game is undoubtedly a factor. More and more the club game, with the vaunted pressing systems and forensic approaches of the likes of Liverpool and Manchester City, seems entirely removed from what we see at major tournament summers. Would the Ronaldo of Juventus have had as much broken field to himself against, say, Bayern Munich to score the goal he did against Germany? Perhaps not. But on international fields, his body, his weapon, remains that bit more potent.

So, no, irrespective of how Wednesday goes for Portugal in Budapest, it won’t be the last we’ll see of Ronaldo at a major tournament. More water to go under the bridge. More water to go into those reusable bottles. Ikea may have to get the chequebook out.

Joe Callaghan is a Toronto-based sports and feature writer based and a freelance contributor for the Star. Reach him via email: joecallaghan84@hotmail.com or follow him on Twitter: @JoeCallaghan84