Cristiano Ronaldo’s Strident Swansong – By Sam Nwaoko

By Sam Nwaoko

A king whose indiscretions cannot be contained any longer by his subjects will eventually receive the only one thing he had thereby curried: Disrespect. Lovers of football the world over, who would be dispassionate indeed, will agree that it is getting to that unfortunate point with the adored Cristiano Ronaldo dos Santos Aveiro. A horde of passionate football lovers in his native Portugal seem to have joined those who are looking at the megastar’s illustrious football life through the prism of one Igbo aphorism. Ásókàtá eze ányá e kpùrú èkètè n’íhú gwá ya okwu. When you get fed up with the king’s imprudence, you will use your straw hat as a mask, fling out courtesies and tell him the bitter truth.
Our beloved CR7 is courting that kind of treatment. This is something the eyes should not behold – it is not marvelous in our eyes to see the great footballer disgraced in any way or anywhere. It might even be that he has, sadly, arrived at that undesirable arena already. Looking at the extant happenings around the beloved CR7, it could be said that his teammates in the Portugal national team, the Seleção Portuguesa de Futebol, have already pointed to the door. Other Portuguese national team players have shown him that he has had enough. Or, conversely, it could be that they have had enough of him and they were sending a clearer message – you know, the Yoruba sociological metaphor of the remnant of the tuber of yam.
Unfortunately, Cristiano Ronaldo does not seem to be reading the writing on the wall. The Portugal great is either not seeing the signs in the national team, or he is so deeply occupied with his own thoughts and ego that he cannot see or read the signs. As a unit, even if the Seleção Portuguesa is not worried about anything else going forward, they are obviously worried about their chances of winning another trophy – European or, perhaps the World Cup. The team knows that this would always be slimmer with the aging Cristiano Ronaldo and his declining output.
And this is because Ronaldo and his supporters think he is still the one, and that he must always be involved in every game. At the age 41, this is the time to put an end to the numerous excuses and tell the indecorous king the bitter truth. The long, winding Cristiano Ronaldo debate has led to the reinvention of the popular saying that ‘if you have a problem with everyone, maybe you are the problem’. The younger generation and the internet warriors are now of the opinion that ‘if you smell smoke in every room you enter, maybe you are the one on fire.’
To try to prove this, the internet generation has reminded the world of the usually ugly exit patterns of Cristiano Ronaldo from some of the big clubs where he had played and excelled. Of course, the positive Ronaldo effect had followed him to those clubs because he won major trophies with them. On the flip side, the negative Ronaldo effect also happened in these clubs because he left in controversial circumstances and without saying proper goodbye.
The first of his unceremonious exits was at the behemoth Real Madrid. When he joined the star assemblage as that season’s Galactico, he did not disappoint. He was the costliest purchase among a trio which included Kaka and Kareem Benzema. He shone brightly to justify the hype of that era and made a huge impact. He rose to the pinnacle in the club and broke multiple football and commercial records. He won four UEFA Champions League titles in five years; won the Club World Cup; he won the Spanish La Liga and numerous individual awards. The world knows that in his prime, he ran neck to neck with anyone else who won the Ballon d’Or, especially during his years at Madrid. There he won that prestigious individual award five times and came short of only one other football genius, the man known as Lionel Andrés Messi.
But how did his romance with Real Madrid end? He fell out with the club’s president, Florentino Perez, and shortly after Madrid defeated Liverpool in the 2018 UEFA Champions League final in Kyiv, everything came to the fore. Football flowers would recall his exchanges with Perez, whom he blamed for pushing him out of Real Madrid. Soon after, words went around that it was ego and disagreement over wages that caused the rift. Messi’s and Neymar’s earnings at Barcelona came into the picture.
From Madrid, he moved to Juventus. That move was so celebrated that the football world felt the Old Lady of Turin had landed their most-needed cornerstone. They won the Scudetto and the Italian and the Italian Super Cup. That was all. They were not making any headway in the UEFA Champions League, for which Juventus and their fans thought their main man came. Soon, complaints filled the news that Ronaldo had caused a schism at the club. Two of the club’s legends, Leonardo Bonucci and Gianluigi Buffon lamented that their megastar player had destroyed the tactical balance of their team. The two men publicly called out Cristiano Ronaldo and said he had become a bad influence. He left Juventus unceremoniously in the end.
After he left Turin in 2021, Ronaldo responded to the criticisms of Bonucci and Buffon with some handsome dose of haughtiness. He said that he slept well the night they bared their minds, and that they were only jealous of his impressive trophy cabinet. That was it.
Perhaps, Sir Alex Ferguson is the only football gaffer who managed Cristiano Ronaldo beyond his controversies. He used him when he was younger, got maximum results and sold him in his prime for a world record fee of £80 million (approximately €94 million) in the summer of 2009 to Real Madrid. But his return to Old Trafford was celebrated more than the first time he came… as a youngster from Sporting CP in Lisbon. His return after 12 years brought high hopes and many football fans held their breath.
It was so messed up that he did not even run out his two-year contract. It was publicly announced that he had terminated the contract by mutual consent, but beyond that it was clear that there was more than meets the eye. He left and granted an interview to Piers Morgan. That interview was something of a masterpiece and harsh criticism of the United manager.
So, his influence is everywhere he goes. The world cannot remember sweet goodbyes after the numerous legendary performances. There were no backslaps and teary goodbyes. Should Ronaldo not look inwards? I repeat: “if you smell smoke in every room you enter, maybe you are the one on fire.”
That Ronaldo could accept conditions from his friend (?) and national team coach, Jorge Jesus, shows that he himself knows that he is no longer what some of his fans think he still is. The decline is real and natural. That fear factor is gone, and he knows it. So, why are you still creating ripples even in your national team – the legendary home of football legends? If it was not about him, and if there was a tinge of humility, there would not have been the embarrassingly quick acceptance of his Number 7 jersey shortly after he left the Portugal national team camp. There would have been some explanations to the UEFA for his absence, which would have smoothened the jersey numbering rule.
That Rafael Leão wore that shirt was a strong message. It must be the clearest pointer to the thoughts of his teammates in the national team, some of whom are his football children.
Joe, who partners South African Trevor Noah in What Now? with Trevor Noah podcast, said, “Ronaldo fans are Ronaldo fans, they are not football fans. Messi fans are football fans first.” This is arguable, but a lot of facts will make dispassionate football fans agree.
The exploits of this football genius are not the issue here. It is that the world might get disappointed in a great man who does not seem to recognise when to call it quits. It reeks of the Yoruba metaphor of the man blessed with enormous male genitals. Although it is an abstruse belief among the Yoruba, they insist that a man with a hefty penile endowment does not know when to stop…
The denouement of this great footballer is not looking like what it should be. This piece is a swansong because there is hardly any way Cristiano Ronaldo would come back from this phase of his career controversies and remain the same again in the Portuguese national team. He is obviously listening to his strident swansong, a song which he has refused to sing by and for himself.