"He was screaming at me: 'Cristiano! Make the right decisions! Cristiano decision making!'"
Cristiano Ronaldo flashes his pearly whites as he recalls the
bellowed words of Sir Alex Ferguson, the man who he calls his “father in
football” and his great teacher.
Sport has asked the Portuguese superstar which lessons still
resonate inside his head. “Oh, many things,” he replies in near perfect
English. “When you’re a young player, you don’t understand decision
making properly: when to take a touch, when to dribble. He taught me the
basics that took me to where I am today. I remember that in the
beginning – they always say I didn’t do the decision making great. So he
taught me how to do this.
“I feel proud that he pushed me so hard. One of his best qualities is
that he pushed players when they needed it – and in that period of
time, I needed it. I needed him – and
Roy Keane
too, our captain – always screaming to me: ‘Cristiano! Pass the ball!’
But it was good! At the end of the day, I feel happy, because I learned a
lot from them.”
It was 12 years ago this year that Cristiano Ronaldo, a Sporting Lisbon teenager with spaghetti in his hair, ran amok against
Manchester United
in a pre-season friendly. Keane himself recalls it in his
autobiography: “He was up against John O’Shea. Sheasy ended up seeing
the doctor at half-time because he was actually having dizzy spells.”
Since that day, the dizzying rise to the top has continued. The move
to Manchester United; seasons of improvement into becoming one of the
club’s best ever players; an £80m transfer to
Real Madrid;
becoming this famous club’s record goalscorer in just over six seasons.
Yet that doesn’t mean everything in Ronaldo’s life is perfect.
Arrogance and vanity
We’re in Madrid talking to the 30-year-old around the release of a
documentary, Ronaldo, put together by a team of acclaimed filmmakers who
were given behind-the-scenes access for a year. Early on, we hear
Ronaldo say that he’s aware that some people view him as “arrogant” and
“vain”. Does he feel misunderstood?
“It is what it is. I cannot complain. If you worry a lot about what
everyone is thinking, you’re not gonna live your life. Of course I try
to do the right things, to be an example… but after that, you have to
live your life. Nobody is in my shoes. They don’t know me. They don’t
live the way I live, they don’t train when I’m training, they don’t go
play and [have] people boo. The easy way is to criticise. But I’ve
played sports as a professional for 13 years. I’m used to it like that.”
Laid bare, his words hint at bitterness, but his delivery in person
is breezily matter-of-fact. Many footballers are wary and monosyllabic
in interview settings – perhaps fearing how their words will be twisted
or cowering under the glare of a cabal of PR people. Yet Ronaldo is
animated and engaging, shifting around on a hotel sofa with child-like
energy. It’s almost disappointing.
Sport was semi-hoping for the scowling prima donna who smacks the turf after he fails to score (even if a team-mate just has).
The film covers the start of 2014 to the beginning of this year,
bookended by Ronaldo winning his second, and then third, Ballon d’Or
awards. It’s obvious how much both successes mean to him, yet this is
fuel for critics who claim that, if there’s a flaw in this superlative
footballer, it’s that he’s too much of an individualist. The question is
why – for a player who’s won the
Champions League with two different clubs, plus every major domestic trophy in both England and Spain – does a voted-for award matter so much?
“To be recognised as the best player in the world is fantastic – but
it’s not the most important thing,” he replies. “For me, the most
important thing is to be at a level, year by year. This is the challenge
for me. This is the most difficult thing. And people who understand
football, they recognise that.
“Of course if you win [team] trophies, it’s better. But I feel good, I
win things both individual and collective – but of course I want more. I
expect to play another five, six years – and I want more and more. This
is something that I love.”
World Cup woes
The film is not, however, a slavish account of Ronaldo’s triumphs. It
also includes Portugal’s World Cup campaign, in which their number
seven, labouring with a knee injury, is unable to lift his country out
of the group stage – scoring just once, against Ghana. The agony of
disappointment is writ large on his face, but it’s someone else’s pain
that makes for the documentary’s most emotive scene.
Ronaldo is extremely close to his mother, Dolores. At one point,
while watching her son play against the USA in a World Cup game on TV in
Madeira, she gets up mid-match and leaves her sitting room in distress
to wander alone down a deserted suburban street. The anxiety of seeing
it is simply too much.
“It’s very, very complicated,” Ronaldo says of how it makes him feel.
“When you feel your family and your friends are more emotional, more
nervous than you, it makes me feel a bit nervous too. They should be
more relaxed than me, but sometimes it’s the opposite.
“But they live so intense the sport and my life, that it’s part of
it. Especially my mum. My daddy died ten years ago, and I don’t want my
mum to die in the next five or ten years. I want that she can live. So I
try to make her calm: ‘Relax, it’s football – it’s not life.’ But it’s
hard, because she lives so intense. So intense, all the time. She saw
the game, she’s nervous… [sighs] and it’s hard.”
Ronaldo lost his father José to an alcohol related liver condition
when Cristiano was just 20. “He drank every day,” says the player
openly. Not having his father around to see and share in his
achievements – and not to know him as a man now – is a regret that
Ronaldo shares in the film.
Yet, in other ways, he remains an opaque figure; wandering around his
glass mansion like some improbably chiselled aftershave advert come to
life. Some of his confessions – “I consider myself an isolated person” –
chime with the view of him as an ultra-competitive individualist.
Someone singular and obsessive in his pursuit of perfection.
What he has quite clearly is a genuinely close and loving bond with
his scene-stealing son, Cristiano Junior (naturally). The little tyke
enjoys fun-time activities with Pops, including ‘work out which car has
gone missing from our gigantic garage’ (turns out it’s not the Porsche,
it’s not the Roller – it’s the Lambo). A game we can all recall playing
with our own fathers. Then there’s the fun of press-ups with Dad, trips
to the Ballon d’Or ceremony and – yes – bumping into one
Lionel Messi.
Well, we got this far without mentioning him. Yet Ronaldo is at pains
to point out that, despite what you may have heard, he has a perfectly
cordial relationship with Barcelona’s own resident genius.
No Messi situation
“It’s normal,” he says of the press speculation that the rivalry between
them is of a deeply personal nature. “It’s to sell papers – and for the
media it’s great to say that. But on the one side, while it’s very
normal, on the other side… I don’t know why they do it. Because my
relationship with him is good.
“In the past eight years, we are on the stage together all the time –
and I never, ever, had a problem with him. He’s a fantastic
professional, a fantastic player. It’s just the press making that story.
But it’s normal.”
It might be “normal” for the world’s two best footballers, playing in
equivalent positions for Spain’s best teams and fiercest rivals, to be
constantly compared. But it seems odd how divisive an issues it is; that
you have to choose between the two – that somehow a compliment given to
one is seen as a slight on the other. Especially when – it seems
obvious to point out – they’re both superb. In terms of sheer
consistency alone – of never seeming to have a season ‘off’ – they’re
two of the greatest players club football has ever seen. Both are worth
enjoying while they’re here, because we’ll be boring our grandchildren
with tales of their exploits. Not that Ronaldo is finished yet.
“Why not?” he says when we ask him if we’ll see him back in the
Premier League
again. “In football, you never know what will happen tomorrow. I feel
great here – it’s a fantastic club – but tomorrow, I don’t know. People
know I love Manchester United. It’s great there – they support me a lot…
I’m very good here at Madrid, but in the future: nobody knows. Let’s
see what’s gonna happen.”
With that, we have time for just one more question. Because he’s been part of his own documentary,
Sport wonders,
which current sporting figure would he himself like to sit down and
watch a feature-length film about? It’s a question that briefly stumps
him. Not because he can’t think of any, but because there are too many
names to consider.
“Football players, basketball, athletes – I follow a lot of them. All
the guys I like are at the top level. For example, I watched the [2015
World Championships] athletics – the qualification. I saw
Usain Bolt
win, then Justin Gatlin did – and I loved it! I couldn’t wait to see
the final. I like sport, I like other sports – so it’s a hard question
for me to answer.”
So
Sport departs, struggling slightly to reconcile the
petulant player with the bright, cheery chap we’ve encountered. Usain
Bolt’s name has just come up, but it’s another great runner’s words that
resonate in our head. Michael Johnson once told us that the reason he
looked so surly on the track before a race was because he tried smiling
once – and he finished second. “Laser focus” was required for him to be
at his optimum.
“I needed to be in a nasty attitude, really – a little bit pissed
off,” he explained. “That’s where I needed to be, but that may not work
for everyone.”
Perhaps Ronaldo is the same. That intensity might be what he needs to
carry on to the pitch to squeeze the absolute maximum out of his
astonishing talent. Whatever he’s doing, it works. It might have taken
him a while to master decision making – but most of the choices
Cristiano Ronaldo makes seem to work out pretty well for him now.
