Tiktukno: summary of today's events in sports, 4.12 (Sport1)
Imagine the following scenario: the biggest star in his country of all time is playing in his last tournament.
The team manages to qualify for the deciding stages, even winning a reasonable draw in the first game - if they win, only three victories will separate them from the coveted title in the world.
Then, the day before the big fight, a fan poll reveals that 70% of them would prefer her to do it without him.
The Portuguese are not ungrateful.
The same goes for Manchester United fans who are fed up with one of the biggest stars in the club's history: they don't think of booing their biggest star who gave them so many magical moments, they're not even mad at him but just sad for him, maybe even feel sorry for him.
Yes yes, you feel sorry for the man with the perfect look and a replica salary.
There is no lower than that.
Anger turned to pity.
Cristiano Ronaldo (Photo: GettyImages, Sebastian Frej)
The greatest of all time?
I know that the following sentence may upset many of the Messi crowd (not to mention Maradona and Pele) but in my opinion Cristiano Ronaldo is the greatest soccer player of all time.
Why?
Because in all three others God touched (in Maradona's case, the devil too), Ronaldo touched himself (wipe the smile please) all the way to the top.
His talent was not in doubt for a moment, wait, actually it was: Sir Alex the Great did not notice him at the first moment, when Manchester United had a training match against Sporting Lisbon, somewhere in the summer of 2003. These were his players - Paul Scholes, Gary Neville and Ryan Giggs, who came to the legendary manager at the end of the game and asked him to check if it was possible to sign the young talent.
I will not forget Avi Meller in the studio of the Sports Channel, somewhere at the end of Ronaldo's first season in the Premier League, summing up his work as a great disappointment.
I'm not judging him, God forbid, Ronaldo of that season used to repeat the same action over and over again: receive the ball on the wing, leave it in place as he moves his legs left and right - and then smash into the defender who was standing in front of him.
It took a while for this head-on-the-wall exercise to be accompanied by a few other moves that made him a star.
More in Walla!
"This is how I found the solution to the knee pains that made my life miserable"
Submitted by Apostrophe
The ego emerged early in the career.
Young Cristiano Ronaldo (Photo: GettyImages)
the enemy within
However, at the same time as he became the best player in England, a nemesis emerged for Dr. Cristiano, in the form of Mr. Ronaldo: he only started paying his first bills in the service of Sir Alex in the 2004-2005 season, when the championship moved from Highbury to Stamford Bridge, Chelsea Mourinho did the same the following season and only in May 2007 did the crown return to Old Trafford. How did Ronaldo react? In secret negotiations with Florentino Perez and Real Madrid.
"In the name of the father" (referring to Fergie and not to the man who named his son after the former US president) he remained at Old Trafford for two more seasons, even scoring in the 2008 Champions League final against Grant's Chelsea (although he missed two penalties that were only lucky They did not become fateful - in the semi-final against Barcelona and in the penalty shootout, in the final against Chelsea).
A year later Erez was on his way to Madrid.
Similarities in their greatness and their fall.
Michael Jordan in Washington (Photo: GettyImages)
Who loves me more than me?
It's true that we live in an era where we no longer judge footballers who want the next contract and the big money, but with all due respect to them, we also hope that they will show some heart and soul, two qualities that Ronaldo never possessed.
All his eyes were focused only on one person - himself.
It swept him to the highest level, unbelievable that for so many years he managed to overshadow even Messi, perhaps the most talented footballer of all time.
But just like Michael Jordan in basketball, a comparison that has been used (not unreasonable in my opinion) more and more as Ronaldo's career has extended, he will discover that the only possibility in which we are able to forgive a player who always puts himself above the team, is only if he is the best in the world .
In other words: as long as the phenomenal ability manages to outshine the ego, everything is fine.
The moment she starts to back off - and every athlete has this moment, the ego maniac takes over.
Jordan needed years to pass so that we would all stay with his memory of his beautiful days in Chicago and forget the weak answering voice that characterized the end of his career in Washington.
Ronaldo could learn from the other's experience, but he has proven time and time again that the biggest victim of his ego is himself.
The comeback to United proved that his judgment was impaired.
Cristiano Ronaldo (Photo: GettyImages, Nathan Stirk)
I'm coming home?
It's possible that at 37 he was still one of the best players in the world, but after he had trouble delivering the goods at the end of his time at Juventus, he should have understood the hint and not choose Chapter B with the stressed and frustrated ex, who hoped that the return of the champion of her youth would make her as beautiful as she was in Chapter A of the relationship.
Ronaldo's choice, at his age, in the toughest league in the world, was proof that something in his judgment was fundamentally flawed.
Instead of going to MLS (or to Saudi Arabia) and getting the big money, instead of coming home to Sporting and getting the big respect, he preferred to try and prove to everyone that he is capable of being the best even among the best.
Tried and failed.
It seems that the time has come to tell the truth about Ronaldo's return to Manchester United: those who wanted to bring him back to England were actually the owners of the city rival, Manchester City.
Only City has a coach with a firm opinion - and Pep Guardiola was already ready for a fight along the lines of "me or him", until the fool across the road came and took City's chestnuts out of the fire: the American owners and their doer, Ed Woodward, who thought about the merchandising, landed him at Old Trafford Despite the opposition of the weak coach, Ole Gunnar Solskjaer - and even if this romance started with flowers, it was clear to anyone with an understanding that it would end in tears.
Only he knew the secret.
Alex Ferguson (Photo: Reuters)
The good angel, the bad angel
Ronaldo is an example of a player who built his career with his own hands.
Throughout it had only two significant professionals: his first manager at the highest levels, Sir Alex Ferguson and his agent Mino Raiola.
The first managed to instill in him the need to curb the ego in the name of team play.
The second actually inflated his ego in order to cut a coupon from the next signing.
All the rest of the credit goes to Ronaldo himself: his diet could have earned him a square named after him at the entrance to Moshav Amirim.
His work in the gym, while players half his age were still sleeping, would have made Arnold Schwarzenegger look like a bum.
If it is possible to debate the question of whether he was the greatest footballer in history, one thing is indisputable: he is certainly the hardest working of them all.
It's just that the day comes when it's not enough - and then, from the heights of age, you have to know how to make a small concession on the ego, to reduce the minutes of the game, to understand that the most magnificent final chord you can issue will be in the form of the next star growing up next to you - and this is perhaps the only feature that separated Ronaldo from perfection.
Years passed until the final chord was forgotten.
Yossi Benyon (Photo: Kobi Eliyahu)
Memories of Yossi Banyon
This is not an unusual case: Avi Nemani was like that, Yossi Benyon too, from both of them we needed a break so that we could remember the magic that characterized the beautiful years and not the final chord where the ego overshadowed the talent.
And this is exactly where the fans of the Portugal national team are today: on the one hand, they know that this is the biggest star, one that is twenty places behind him, in second place (yes, I know there is an accounting contradiction here) is Luis Figo and forty places after him, in third place, from maybe Bruno Fernandez ( I don't refer to the great Yozebio - everything that preceded the television era simply "didn't show").
Maybe Bruno is a good example to end this column with: he is the complete opposite of Ronaldo, he will never come close to his level, but right now he is significant and useful to the Portuguese team much more than the huge ego that covers the number 7 shirt.
1/1 Portugal national team player, Cristiano Ronaldo
So Ronaldo should start in the round of 16?
Yes
No
5819 participants
I wish I was wrong
I admit that there is something in me that wants Ronaldo to shut me up, that the thirty-year-old Cristiano - and not the thirty-eighth - will appear at this World Cup (and not in a stupid fight about who the goal belongs to, a fight that says: "I'm ready to dismantle the team's dressing room in the middle of the most important tournament of hers and mine , just to mark another 'V' on my personal checklist"), that he will hurt the Swiss, that he will break the heart of Brazil like Paolo Rossi in his time, that he will go on to the final and lift the trophy - if only so that his final chord will be as magnificent as the most beautiful moments of his career His.
It's just that, as it seems right now, in a week the disappointed Portuguese will remind themselves of the fact that even the only national team title they've won so far, the European Championship, they only achieved after Cristiano was injured and became a reluctant team player, as a cheerleader from the bench.
How sad it would be if this was the final frame for the career of someone who was truly one of the greatest of all time.
FIFA World Cup
the magazine
Tags
Cristiano Ronaldo
Portugal national team
Manchester United