Epic journey of Ronaldo to the top of footballing world

Contemporary football fans can be divided roughly into two groups. The first one is made up of those who reckon that the diminutive Argentinian forward Lionel Messi is the footballing equivalent of a god.

The second group comprises those fans who find the adoration preposterous and blasphemous – they can’t imagine any other footballing deity save for Cristiano Ronaldo.

Regardless of which footballing religion you profess to, Team Messi or Team Ronaldo, one truism is shared — both of these men are phenomenal footballers.

Their wizardry over the last decade has seen hitherto revered records smashed to pieces and major statistical milestones quashed to insignificance as they strode the football pitches across Europe like colossuses on steroids.

It’s no wonder that between them, they have shared the accolade of the “Best Player in the World” interchangeably for the last seven years straight.

It was no surprise then earlier this week that the duo was once again on top of the shortlist of the FIFA Ballon d’Or, an award given to the male player considered to have performed the best in the previous calendar year based on votes from national team coaches and captains, as well as journalists from around the world.

As far as football is concerned, this award is the penultimate recognition of individual excellence. It is a highly coveted prize that indicates recognition of individual prodigious brilliance slightly outside the norms of rewarding team spirit.

When it comes to the Ronaldo versus Messi debate, I have always sided more with the small Argentinian guy for what I have liked to call ‘footballing reasons’ and I have even written the same in this column before. But I think it’s been more to do with the fact that Messi as a person is easy to like.

To put it bluntly, Cristiano is a man whose personality is quite ‘hard’ to like. Take four years ago, for instance. In September 2011, his team Real Madrid was visiting Dinamo Zagreb.

The opposing fans, seeking to get under his skin, taunted him with boos while loudly chanting the name of his rival, Messi. In one of those rare occurrences, he ended the game not scoring despite his team winning 1-0.

Visibly angry after the game, one reporter sought his opinion on why he thought he was being singled out by the rival supporters.

“I think that because I am rich, handsome and a great player people are envious of me,” he said. “I don’t have any other explanation.”

To be fair to him, he is probably right on all three accounts, but to think that he would gather the courage to utter such while under public spotlight talks of unbridled arrogance.

But when you dig into his story further you begin to understand and even forgive his occasional lack of modest civility. Contrary to his flashy self, Ronaldo was not born into aristocracy.

If you were to visit Santo Antonia on Madeira Island, the most remarkable feature about it would be Museu CR7 – a museum dedicated to the recent achievements of Ronaldo – so far unmistakably its most illustrious son.

Santo António is the birthplace of Ronaldo, the youngest child of Maria Dolores dos Santos Aveiro, a cook, and José Dinis Aveiro, a municipal gardener with an alcoholic problem who was to later succumb to related complications.

His second given name, Ronaldo, was chosen after then US President Ronald Reagan, who was his father’s favourite actor.

Ronaldo confesses to being brought up in poverty and sharing a room with his brother and sisters. His abrasive manners were also revealed early where at 14 he was expelled from school after he threw a chair at his teacher.

Ronaldo agreed with his mother to focus entirely on football which brought his academic pursuits to a stop.

One gets the feeling that football saved the young lad from a sorry life of juvenile delinquency and while this may not suffice as an excuse, it makes it easier to stomach that his indiscipline is now limited to a few egotistic remarks.

His idea to embrace football was actually a good one. After plying his amateur trade in his hometown club called Andorinha, he soon moved to CD Nacional, one of the most well-known teams in Madeira, around his 10th birthday.

But he didn’t stay there for too long and the year after (1996), he was persuaded to join Sporting Lisbon, one of the biggest clubs in Portugal.

There, his talent saw him become the first player ever to play for Sporting’s under-16, under-17, under-18, B-team, and the first team, all within one season.

In 2002, at 15, Ronaldo was diagnosed with tachycardia, a condition where the heart rate exceeds the normal range. In general, a resting heart rate over 100 beats per minute is accepted as tachycardia.

Tachycardia can be dangerous, depending on the speed and type of rhythm and in Ronaldo’s case, would have resulted in end of his football career prematurely.

Thankfully, Sporting staff were made aware of the condition and he underwent a surgery. A laser was used to cauterise the area of his heart that was causing the problem. He was discharged on the same day and was back to training barely a few days later.

His hard working nature has since been recognised by his colleagues who always marvel at the amount of work rate he puts into his preparations.

Such were his gallant efforts on the pitch that when his club Sporting played Manchester United in a pre-season friendly match in 2003, it was not scouts but the opposing players who were stunned by his technique and natural talent.

They kept talking about him on their way home and urged their manager to sign him. It was this chat that finally led Sir Alex Ferguson to sign Ronaldo in a transfer fee of around 15 million euros in 2003.

If he was a talented young player, Ronaldo was still raw in his edges and it took the genius of Sir Alex to refine him into the finest footballer on the planet we know today.

Sir Alex was to be proved right after his words became a reality. “He is one of the most exciting young players I’ve ever seen,” he said in 2003.

Truly so , in 2008, the world stood in awe as Ronaldo received his inaugural FIFA World Player-of-the Year award before his record transfer to Real Madrid the following year.

As he received his third such honour in Zurich last Monday night, I couldn’t help but reckon, hate him or love him, Ronaldo’s rise to the top of the footballing world has been an epic one.

Meanwhile, his dominance of the footballing space may not be letting up any time soon.

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