Ronaldo: In his pomp, he was a footballing force close to unstoppableIn spite of his career choices, lifestyle and knees, the World Cup winner deserves to be remembered as a remarkable player
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Ronaldo is greeted by Pele, right, at the end of the 2002 World Cup final in Yokohama, Japan, and in which the striker scored both goals in a 2-0 win. Photograph: Thomas Kienzle/AP
"The head wants to go on but the body can't take any more. I think of an action but I can't do it the way I want to. It's time to go."
With those words one of the greatest of post-war footballers has just announced his retirement. Ronaldo has perhaps been in semi-retirement for some time, he has been back in Brazil with Corinthians since 2009 and more regularly hitting the headlines for partying than playing football. Yet this is a player who has performed with distinction for not only Barcelona but Real Madrid as well, not only Internazionale but also Milan.
With more than 350 career goals in club football, mostly at the very top level, and an astonishing return of 62 goals in 97 appearances for Brazil, Ronaldo's place in the pantheon of modern greats is secure. He won his first Fifa World Player of the Year award at the tender age of 20 in 1996, went on to join Zinedine Zidane as one of the only two players to be so honoured three times, won the Ballon d'Or twice, and became the highest goalscorer – with 15 – in the history of the World Cup in 2006, four years after scoring the goals that beat Germany in the 2002 final.
Those are only a selection of the highlights of a remarkable career, yet statistics and awards alone do not tell the whole story. Anyone who saw Ronaldo in his pomp in the late 90s and early years of this century saw a footballing force that was close to unstoppable. Not always as elegant as Zidane or as inventive as Lionel Messi, Ronaldo's particular speciality was a sort of head-down charge at defenders with the ball at his feet.
Using strength as well as incredibly quick feet and close control, he was frequently able to take on three or four defenders and emerge on the other side with the ball, there to either score or set up a team-mate. His all-round finishing was excellent as well; he scored plenty of goals that team-mates had helped create, but when, say, Manchester United first encountered him at Inter, it was his direct, surging runs with the ball that brought the San Siro crowd to its feet and had the air sizzling with anticipation.
That was the style of play that earned Ronaldo the Italian nickname Il Fenomeno and persuaded Real Madrid he was a must have galactico, and though he was by no means a flop in his second spell in Spain – in this country he will always be remembered for the hat-trick at Old Trafford that earned a standing ovation from home supporters, despite Manchester United just having been knocked out of the Champions League as a result – injuries began to take their toll and he was never quite the same player he had been at Barcelona or in Italy.
He was enormously popular with Bernabéu supporters but never managed to get a European Cup winners' medal with Real Madrid as the galactico experiment gradually began to fall from favour. By the end, with an all too evident weight problem, he found himself on the sidelines at Real, with Fabio Capello preferring the less talented but more reliable Ruud van Nistelrooy.
The lack of Champions League success at any of his high-profile European clubs is the only black mark on Ronaldo's CV when trying to evaluate him against other modern greats, that and the nagging suspicion that he kept playing for the right clubs at the wrong time, or vice versa.
At Barcelona and Inter he won only Uefa Cups, scoring in the final both times, for though he moved between the two for a record fee of £19m neither was the pre-eminent force at the time, either at home or abroad. Real Madrid undoubtedly were in 2002, yet Ronaldo arrived just after they had won their third final in five years, in Glasgow, and though no one knew it at the time, they were about to see their supremacy in Spain challenged by the rise of Barcelona and the increasingly obvious flaws in the galactico philosophy.
Similarly when Ronaldo joined Milan, he was cup-tied for the 2007 campaign that saw Carlo Ancelotti's side gain revenge for Istanbul by defeating Liverpool in the final in Athens, and the only Italian side to have made it to the final since was Inter last year.
So perhaps Ronaldo was unlucky in his timing or his choice of clubs – although he was usually the one agitating for a move – for there is no doubt that at his very best he would have walked into any club in the world. That is one definition of world class, there are several variations, though one can be fairly confident the description is entirely fitting in Ronaldo's case.
For several years at his peak he was the best player in the world, and rarely can there have been a forward in any era of the game who so terrified defenders. In the all-time rankings Ronaldo might have to be content with a place on the second tier, just below the total-genius level occupied by Pele, Maradona and Johan Cruyff, though in terms of being good at what he was required to do, Ronaldo could stand comparison with the very best.
His career choices may not have been ideal, his lifestyle questionable and his fitness, particularly his knees, suspect throughout, but in spite of all that Ronaldo deserves to be remembered as a remarkable player. He could be unstoppable, some of the world's best defences found him unplayable, and he had an endearingly goofy smile to go with it. Just look at one of the many YouTube compilations of his goals and best moments, and ask yourself how many other players could have done that. One of the all-time greats, without question.
_________________ "It felt like a really pointless version of ketamine: no psychedelic effects, no pleasant slide into rubbery nonsense, just a sudden drop off the cliff of wrongness." "i'm gonna wreck you so bad we're going to have to change church"
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