Ronaldo

No, dear football fans. No.

I am not talking about the Portuguese Cristiano Ronaldo – the one whose use of hair gel reaches ridiculous extremes, whose vanity knows no bounds, and who is fond of rolling his eyes to heaven. But of course, a remarkable striker.

I am talking about the Brazilian Ronaldo Luiz Nazario de Lima (what a beautiful name). A much greater striker, in the Petchary’s humble opinion.

Brazilian Ronaldo retired on Valentine’s Day this year. He has suffered from health problems and was struggling. In the later years of his career, he also battled weight gain, due to a thyroid condition, and many cruel jokes were made. He always had a chubby face, and gap teeth too.

But ignoring all that trivia, he was the only player to win FIFA Player of the Year three times, alongside the legendary Zinedine Zidane, his former Real Madrid teammate. Among other achievements.

“O Fenomeno” (wouldn’t it be great to have a name like that) was born in a suburb of Rio de Janeiro. Unlike Argentina’s Carlos Tevez, who grew up in a determinedly tough neighborhood of Buenos Aires, Ronaldo’s neck of the woods is relatively comfortable, with trees. And he has that reliable look of everyone’s favorite son – approachable, lovable, expecting the best out of life. And yet, he described his suburban upbringing as a life of poverty. I am not sure about that. Fans, can you enlighten me please – middle-class suburb, or poor favela?

Doesn’t a footballer deserve a middle-class upbringing, once in a while?

I read a quote from Ronaldo recently. He said that scoring goals was not his specialty, it was his “habit.” It sounds a little self-satisfied – complacent even – but it certainly was his habit for quite some time. Especially in the Spanish La Liga, where in the 2003/4 season he scored 34 goals, besides nine goals in the Champions League. For Barcelona, he scored 34 goals in 37 games. And all that was after a stunning record at PSV Eindhoven, where he scored 55 goals in 57 appearances.

His wildly prolific career was at its peak from 1996 right up to 2005; in the early years of this century, Ronaldo could do no wrong. The 2002 season, in which Brazil won the World Cup, was a remarkable comeback for Ronaldo, who badly injured his knee in 1999 and again the following year. He won the Golden Boot for top scorer in the tournament. Just when other strikers thought it was safe to aspire to his greatness, there came the 2002 second incarnation of Ronaldo, a “Galactico” (superstar from another galaxy perhaps) signed up by Real Madrid that same year. He scored twice in his debut game for this ever-ambitious, PR-obsessed team that now boasts the above-mentioned glamor boy, Cristiano Ronaldo.

When the Petchary visited Rio de Janeiro some years ago, she was sitting in the open window of the restaurant where Antonio Carlos Jobim wrote “The Girl from Ipanema.” A somewhat Bohemian man in a baggy sweater ambled along the sidewalk, hands in pockets (a writer? a dreamer? a painter? a bossanova aficionado?). Right behind him, an energetic man half-riding a bicycle, with wide cheekbones and tufts of curly hair (I can see his face now, several years later) broke into a seraphic smile on spotting us (a think-bubble came up – “tourists”!) and held up a complicated array of clothes hangers. On the gold and green jerseys, the number nine (Ronaldo’s number) shone.

And yes, the Petchary was such a sucker. She almost immediately forked out forty U.S. Dollars (which maybe was a bit too much) for a Ronaldo jersey for her son. At the time, Ronaldinho – a few years younger, with a bobbing pony-tail and laser-like free kick – was already starting to shine and possibly rival his fellow countryman with almost the same name. And there were some of his jerseys too. But…

But Ronaldo was a true football great. Now retired from his injuries, his accolades and glory, and even to some extent his extraordinarily complex love life, at the age of 34 our genial hero is looking benevolently towards the future of Brazilian football.

In particular, he is deeply impressed by a skinny nineteen year-old from Santos with a pointed/Mohican hairstyle by the name of Neymar da Silva Santos Junior, who just scored two very nice goals against Scotland in a friendly. Several European clubs are polishing off their millions-0f-pounds checkbooks in anticipation.

Neymar at a press conference last August — The precocious Neymar looks cool, composed and ready for stardom

Then there is Paulo Henrique Chagas de Lima, simply known as Ganso, an attacking midfielder also at Santos. At age 21, he has already had a few injury problems, and Ronaldo describes him as “more withdrawn,” but then there is also Lucas, who plays for Sao Paulo.

But hold on a minute, isn’t Lucas a Liverpool midfielder? He’s pretty good. No, this is another, younger Lucas. But Liverpool Lucas isn’t old? No, this is an eighteen-year-old wunderkind who scored a hat trick against Uruguay’s Under-20 team recently.

Three strong picks from Ronaldo. And there will be more to come, impossibly young and self-assured, with the big clubs already hedging their bets and working on possible deals. The Petchary hopes their careers will be long and glorious, although some will inevitably fall by the wayside and burn out too soon.

Meanwhile, Ronaldo has made another important change in his life recently. At the end of 2010, after the birth of his fourth child, he announced he had got himself a vasectomy. It’s called simplifying your life.