Breaking the Offside Trap 03.10.09: The REAL Ronaldo

Posted by Matt Snelling on 03.10.2009

If you google 'Ronaldo' almost 3 quarters of the links on the first page relate to Manchester United's Portuguese winger. Let us not forget however the legacy of Brazil's Ronaldo, the greatest striker of his generation.

It's hard to keep the name ‘Ronaldo' out of the headlines. It seems that every aspect of his life is scrutinised, people have an insatiable desire to know everything about him. For every great goal, breathtaking dribble and clichéd weeping keeper, onlookers seem equally obsessed with his celebrity. He's never far from the news, indeed both on and off the pitch he often is the news. Once again this past week has been no different. For this is the week he made his long awaited comeback following over a year out of the professional game due to the ruptured tendons that he suffered in his left knee last February for AC Milan against Livorno...what? Oh sorry, did you think I was talking about somebody else?

It's no real surprise that if you asked the majority of fans today what they thought about Ronaldo, they'd probably tell you that he's pretty flash, that he has some amazing tricks, that he's the reigning World Player of the Year and that *whisper it quietly* he sometimes likes to go to ground a little easily. If you then mentioned that you wanted to know about the one born in Brazil, or rather Ronaldo Luis Nazario de Lima then you might well get a reaction along the lines of; "Who? Oh yeah that guy, hasn't he retired?" Perhaps even more depressingly your stock response would probably be closer to; "Oh sorry, you meant the fat one."



There's only one Pele. Only one Maradona. Only one Best, one Beckenbauer, one Di Stefano, one Zidane. Well maybe there's more, but I think you know who I'm talking about. His son Yordi played for Barcelona and Manchester United but there's only one Cruyff. It may be a somewhat common surname, but if I mentioned the name ‘Moore', you can be pretty sure I was talking about England's World Cup winning captain rather than a not particularly good West Bromwich Albion reserve team striker.

Ronaldo deserves to be mentioned amongst those names above by the way, no question in my mind. Perhaps it's just unfortunate for the 32 year old that his namesake from Portugal, eight years his junior, also happens to be a somewhat special player who is now starring in a period of time where the Brazilian's star has been clearly on the wane. However the man known in Brazil as "Fenomeno" (phenomenon) should not be forgotten nor should he be eclipsed.

For the finest striker of his generation is one of the world's greatest ever football players. Three times he has been FIFA World Player of the Year. In 2002, after two major surgeries on his injured knee and almost two years of rehabilitation he returned to the Brazilian national team to inspire his country to World Cup success. Eight times he struck in that tournament, including two in the final against Germany. No questions of being a big game bottler here.

There have been few better goal scorers at the highest levels of the game than Ronaldo. During his time plying his trade for Cruzeiro, PSV Eindhoven, Barcelona, Inter Milan, Real Madrid and then AC Milan he has amassed 319 goals in just 451 games, a staggeringly phenomenal record. Then there is the 62 in 97 he has at international level, 15 of which (a record) coming in games at World Cup Finals.

Yet stats by themselves, never mind how mind blowing they are, do not do the man justice. Describing a player as a ‘phenomenon' has rarely been so appropriate. Go back and watch the goals he scored at Barcelona, where as a 20 year old he combined blistering pace and acceleration with majestic close control and the power of a bull. He destroyed defences, at times almost single-handedly. Once he got a sniff at goal there was nothing that could stand in his way.

In the notoriously pragmatic and stifling environment of Serie A he notched up an impressive 25 strikes in his debut season there, helping Internazionale to European glory and the (then not derided) UEFA Cup. One of the cornerstones of the now infamous ‘Galactico' era at Real Madrid, he used the momentum from his starring role at the 2002 World Cup to drive him into twice scoring 30 goals in a season in the Spanish Capital. Any person who witnessed his breathtaking hattrick at Old Trafford in the Champions League in 2003 can deny the man's claim to be amongst the best to ever lace up a pair of boots. The standing ovation he received that night from the Manchester United fans in attendance an iconic moment of respect for fantastic talent and ability overcoming tribal animosities.

However as much as Cristiano's ascendancy in recent times may have led to a splitting of the ‘Ronaldo brand awareness' the Brazilian's fall from grace has come about largely because of a combination of his physical condition and his now legendary playboy lifestyle. Ronaldo is a man who has seen considerable amounts of his career cruelly ripped away from him by a succession of major injuries that would have forced most out of the game. We have already seen one miraculous comeback, now almost seven years ago but for many, there doesn't appear too much left in the tank.



On top of the injuries Ronaldo's reputation, and perhaps, although hopefully not his legacy, has also taken a battering in recent years. Rather than producing column inches in newspapers for goal scoring feats, Ronaldo has become a figure of ridicule in many quarters for the addition of inches to his waistline. Even when not injured, Ronaldo's appearance has become his notoriety. Over the last year or two, whenever he has managed to make it onto a field, gone are the explosive bursts and the powerful shooting, in its place a heavier and slower figure that has looked well off the pace.

On top of the rather unflattering images that have accompanied him in recent times, Ronaldo's actions and off the pitch excesses have resulted in his reputation being tarnished further by a downright bizarre incident that took place in April 2008, where he had been working on getting back to full fitness and a comeback in his homeland. Tom Phillips described the event on Guardian.co.uk last week;

‘he [Ronaldo] ended up in a police station after an incident with three transvestites in a sex motel in west Rio de Janeiro. The striker denied having slept with the transvestites but the episode spawned an avalanche of jokes and television spoofs. In one, aired on the satirical show Panico na TV, a chubby Ronaldo impersonator appears splayed out on a bed next to a pink-clad transvestite with a huge cucumber bulging out from her pink leggings. In the next room another scantily clad transvestite covers her face in shaving cream and begins to remove her beard.'

Perhaps this story getting such airtime is another sign of the ‘celebrity obsessed' culture we experience now in the 21st Century. Ronaldo is not alone in doing some stupid things but the problem is that due to his inactivity on the pitch, stunts like this and being overweight are becoming what he is famous for, rather than being the finest goal scorer of the last 25 years or so. The name Ronaldo is still synonymous with scoring great goals, although that's mainly at the moment because the man in the Number 7 shirt at Manchester United is keeping it relevant.

Perhaps though the story does not quite end there and perhaps the man's latest comeback can have the affect of re-establishing his legacy, which should by right be up there with all of the greats of the game. Famously Ronaldo has fought back from severe injury in the past and last week he made his re-appearance onto a professional football pitch in the white of Corinthians. After fifteen years away in Europe, Ronaldo is home seeking to recapture some of his former glories. Many have been dismissive, many claim that he can clearly no longer cut it and that his body and perhaps mind are now too weak, or rather not focussed enough for him to ever cut it at a significant level ever again.

The naysayers have been quick to argue that the only reason Corinthians have agreed to take him on is, ironically enough because of his name, or rather the value it still carries in Brazil. Phillips quotes Humberto Peron, a sports columnist for the Folha de Sao Paulo newspaper as a clear example of the view that Ronaldo's comeback is little more than a marketing ploy, designed to flog shirts rather than improve the quality of Corinthians' team. In Peron's view;

"Our clubs and their investors want to make money as quickly as possible. Since in the case of Ronaldo Corinthians won't make any money out of a transfer they want to make money out of Ronaldo's reputation." [Corinthians] trust more in [Ronaldo's] ability to generate money than in [his] actual football."

But then, we are quick to forget that he has all but been written off before (in 2002) and he came back to show that the old adage of form being temporary but class being permanent has some grounding outside of cliché city. Let us not forget that this is a man still determined to drive his battered body forward and still take to the pitch. After the succession of career threatening injuries, a lesser player would surely have given up by now. Ronaldo is clearly a rich man and has no need for the money (he could likely still earn more attempting a comeback in Europe) but perhaps he to realises that getting another good couple of years out of his career could do wonders at rehabilitating his tarnished image to give him the legacy his talent so richly deserves.

For many the omens aren't exactly great, after all football everywhere nowadays seems more and more reliant on pace, power and raw athleticism. Following his first brief appearance back, Globo newspaper in Brazil wrote the following; ‘Ronaldo showed he is still a long way off the physical condition you expect from a professional player. [He was] heavy, static, he seemed bloated [and] breathless.' At the weekend though, perhaps we saw a shaft, albeit slight, of optimistic light at the end of the tunnel. In his second appearance for his new club, Ronaldo came off the bench to score a dramatic last minute equaliser against fierce local rivals Palmeiras.

In the immediate aftermath of the game he vowed that there is more to come; "It's always emotional to bounce back. I can't explain what I felt but I certainly thought about... all the difficult moments I've had in this recovery... This is just the beginning. There's still some way to go... I need to lose a bit of weight and gain some speed and mobility."

For all his bravado, Ronaldo is clearly no longer the same player he was when he was 19 or 20, the injuries have seen to that. But at the same time he himself must ensure that he can do everything in his power to make sure that he is as fit as can be and that perhaps means having to change some of those nocturnal habits of his. Rightly or wrongly his legacy and standing as one of the world's greatest ever strikers may just depend on it.