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Cristiano Ronaldo is the kind of player that fans love to hate. In a sport where solidarity and sacrifice is just as important as talent, CR7 stands as the greatest exponent of individualism within a football field.
We hate him for that, but also for the millions of dollars he earns each year, for his luxury cars, for the beautiful women. No player in football today arouses so much disdain as the Portuguese. We hate him so much that even David Beckham ends up falling well for us.
Now, what was the crime committed by CR7 to be so hated? In the football world there are an innumerable amount of egotistical and self-indulgent players such as the Real Madrid striker, but the public looks at them in a more condescending way – Eric Cantona, Mario Balotelli, George Best and Diego Maradona.
Unlike Ronaldo, these big players have managed to awaken in the public a certain complicity, a tacit understanding so that each wrongdoing is magically transformed into a simple prank. These rebels are like us. If fate had not given them such an exceptional talent, we could see them insulting a referee in the stands of La Bombonera or Old Trafford.
Cristiano Ronaldo, however, is a model of a typical player in the 21st century: good-looking, with a privileged physicist, a natural athlete. In short, the dream of every company that seeks to position its brand globally.
Big-name companies have hired the Portuguese to be his ‘public face’. Lionel Messi has also entered in the business, billing millions in advertising, but for the writer of these lines, it is impossible to imagine the Argentine player wearing posh underwear or classy suits.
Now if we put aside all parafarnalia surrounding Ronaldo, if we forget everything glamorous, we find perhaps one of the four best players in the history of world football.
CR7 is a dynamic and fast forward, with ball handling unparalleled and a refined technique. A gunner who has excelled in the toughest league and has managed to reap successes. A player who, despite the limitations imposed by their environment, has steered his country to the top of world football.
To measure the quality of Ronaldo is necessary to talk about his greatest nemesis, Lionel Messi. Cristiano greatness is such that he only has been overshadowed by the Argentine, perhaps the best player ever.
Perhaps, in a different world where Messi was only a grocery stocker in his native Rosario, we could take real dimension of the greatness of CR7. But unfortunately for the Portuguese that world does not exist. Here, he will always have the shadow of the Barcelona player running down beside him. Here he will always be relegated to the immensity of Leo.
It is not wrong to think that, in such a situation, Cristiano Ronaldo has chosen to have a defiant and arrogant attitude as a way to stand out. Each goal scored by CR7 becomes a festival of self-adulation, a way to show the public its worth, a way to shout from the rooftops: “I am the master of world football”.
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