LIVE FROM GERMANY
Cristiano Ronaldo’s Portugal
Different Kind of Family
Cristiano Ronaldo doesn’t need much to be happy. He just needs to play. Every game. Ninety minutes. He needs to score. A brace would be enough. His teammates need to pass him the ball. At all times. He is modest and won’t ask for much as long as his peers don’t pass the ball to each other. He knows, of course, it is a team game — he will laugh with them and celebrate with them. The minimum he requires in return is some respect from the team. A captain’s armband is enough. He should never be subbed off. Ronaldo doesn’t need much from his ‘família’, as he called the Portugal squad recently on Instagram.
So let’s talk a bit about Ronaldo and his idea of family. For Cristiano, family is the most important thing in the world — “keep your family healthy and take care of them — for family is always here with you in good moments and bad moments.”
Ronaldo has five children which he is bringing up with his lady, Georgina. He has spent the most of his adult life living with his mother Dolores or close to her. Only since he moved to Saudi Arabia, she has not been around. The doors of his houses have always been opened to his friends. Even his former agent, Jorge Mendes, was part of Ronaldo’s family. They were so close that other players represented by Mendes were jealous of Ronaldo’s relationship with the agent. Cristiano has two sisters and a brother. As you can imagine, he provides for them. Ronaldo takes care of them, but has enormous expectations from them as well. You see, when you sum it all up, that is one big inner circle. And they all have a role in supporting Ronaldo. They all know their place in a household. As you might have heard, Cristiano Ronaldo dislikes losing. He gets quiet down when things don’t go his ways (he believes he was born to be the best, so how wouldn’t he?). Every member of the family knows what to do to lift him up. They all play a part in creation of that impeccable image-CR7, the best in the world. Even if that means giving all their energy to him. They sacrifice whatever it takes to get him up.
The Portuguese base in Germany is not quite accessible. Google Maps says that from Steinhagen, a village I spent a night in, to Marienfeld, where Cristiano Ronaldo and his team are based, takes three hours and three buses. It is a distance of only 20 kilometres. The place is well hidden. It is bloody exclusive. I mean, it is exclusive from the perspective of someone broke and without a car. In other words, from a perspective of a freelancer. Luckily Nina, an Airbnb owner who rented me a room, gave me a ride. I must have been nice to her sheep.
The Portuguese team is based at the same place they were based during the World Cup 2006 in Germany. Ronaldo was only twenty-one back then, but his appearance was already as huge as it got. He was a Manchester United player and the footballing world was watching him in awe. It was the period while he was still that breezy winger who was moving like a ballerino, passing through defenders as if they were not there. Only France came stronger in the semi-final that summer — Zinedine Zidane, the man who would coach Ronaldo to three consecutive Champions Leagues ten years later, scored a penalty against Portugal.
I was not the only one waiting for Ronaldo to show up at the team camp, but soon after I arrived, I realised that wouldn’t be the case. Instead, Vitinha, a Paris Saint-Germain player, appeared in front of journalists. So I needed to ask Vitinha about Cristiano. But before I say what I asked him, let’s talk about Ronaldo from 2006 when he experienced the German fields for the first time.
The team was orbiting around Ronaldo back then, and he was the main figure. He was unstoppable. He was the man. Nothing looked like he could ever possibly fade into the background. He was destined for the eternity of glory. It all worked well. It was a functional family — with one undeniable talent at the centre of it.
When you have such a talent in the team, sometimes happens that a team naturally starts building around him. Everything starts and everything finishes with the man. Players, more often than not, accept the God-given talent, and accept their roles in the team. They accept they are there to serve the star. That is what happened with Cristiano Ronaldo at Manchester United. It didn’t happen straight away of course, but with time, he became the central figure. Wayne Rooney, a man who would eventually be inducted into the Premier league Hall of Fame for the achievements he fulfilled once Ronaldo had left the club, was just a scullery maid while the Portuguese man was in the house. He was in Ronaldo’s shadow. The system was made for Ronaldo to flourish. The same happened at Real Madrid with Benzema. Once Ronaldo left the club, Benzema won Ballon d’Or for the best player in the world. While Ronaldo was there, the Frenchman couldn’t realise his full potential.
Ronaldo is thirty-nine now. This is his sixth European Championship. He has scored in eleven consecutive international tournaments. He is the most capped player in the history of men’s international football. He has scored more goals for a national team than any other player ever has. He’s both Portugal’s youngest and oldest goalscorer at a World Cup. He has virtually broken every record there is. But he is thirty-nine years of age. The team is not orbiting around him anymore. It cannot.
That proved to be a big problem in recent years. His second stint at Manchester United didn’t go well — he couldn’t accept his place on the bench. So he dragged the whole team down. If he was not happy, he made sure nobody else was happy either. The World Cup in Qatar followed, and the score was the same — Ronaldo lost his place in the starting eleven as the team entered the knockout stage, and the atmosphere was irreversibly impaired. Portugal was knocked out by Morocco in the quarter-final. Players might have been able to accept roles of assistants for someone extraordinary, but they will hardly accept it for someone who is not a better player than them. Not anymore.
Two years later Ronaldo is back at a big tournament with his ‘família’. The Portuguese team will need to do what Cristiano’s family does — they will need to give him space to flourish — even if that means minimising their own potential. They will need to know their roles. We saw it before how easily things can go down if Ronaldo doesn’t get the right treatment from his teammates and coaches. He needs his family behind him — no questions asked.
While Portuguese journalists didn’t ask a single question about Cristiano Ronaldo, for us foreigners, Cristiano was the reason we were there. Vitinha, the man at the press conference, insisted it was not about individuality, but about the collective every time a journalist would ask a question about Ronaldo. I was not going to back down and so, when my turn arrived, I said to Vitinha: “Yes, it is about the team. But is it, perhaps, being part of this team about keeping Cristiano Ronaldo happy?”
I believe I got the most honest answer I could get.
Vitinha said: “We will support Ronaldo and Ronaldo will support us.”
