Lay off Cristiano! Ronaldo is too great for his legacy to be tarnished
Cristiano Ronaldo is one of the greatest players of all time.
There isn’t even a debate to be had; it’s important to remember that even during moments of Messi’s peak, Ronaldo rightly stole his mantle. Without Ronaldo, there’s a case that Messi wins the Ballon d’Or 12 or 13 times in a row - that’s how big of an impact the Portuguese has made on the game.
All of this can be difficult to process when we’re faced with the unrelenting current evidence in front of us - an undeniably egotistical character struggling mentally and physically against the dying of the light, the realisation that all the things he could do, he no longer can.
It must be extraordinarily tough to accept, especially for one who was so good for so long, who has prided himself on his incredible physique and ability to show longevity well beyond that of his peers. With his type of talent - explosive pace, ruthless finishing and direct style - it’s a modern miracle he was still competing at a high level until 37 or 38.
Until that point, no club can say that they didn’t get the very best version of Ronaldo that was available to them at the time.
Ronaldo pushed Messi to become even greater
Ronaldo is a freak, especially given the player he will be compared with forever. Messi’s ability transcends all aspects of the game; the best dribbler we’ve seen, the best finisher, the finest passer, the smartest positional forward to ever grace the pitch.
Ronaldo doesn’t naturally imbue these qualities, and yet pushed Messi each and every year to make the Argentine raise his level to go toe-to-toe with him. Messi rewrote scoring statistics but only because Ronaldo forced him to, driving him forward to completely utilise the arsenal of abilities he had available. Without prime Ronaldo, we probably don’t get prime Messi.
And so Jorge Jesus deciding - finally - that he is not going to indulge Ronaldo any more is to everyone’s benefit. As someone who watched him destroy teams at Manchester United and Real Madrid, whose career, it could be argued, exceeded his raw materials, it’s easy to forget his legacy because he has spent the last half-decade trying to dismantle it himself.
Yes, his behaviour has become cartoonish. His reaction to not featuring for Portugal - in this team of all teams, one of the finest national set-ups of the current era - is cringeworthy.
His adamant stance of continued importance at the detriment of the superb players around him makes him hard to love, except for the hardcore fanboys who hang on his every move.
He has been a caricature of himself, all of his worst petulant tendencies crystallised with each further impactless display. He has his own goal target of 1,000 to reach. He wants to break the international scoring record, too. He wants a lot of things that his body might be unable to deliver, and his incessant focus on himself makes it really difficult to cheer for him.
His attitude offers no favours and no respite in the clip-focused world where anyone can look good - or bad - in a single action. But we shouldn’t hesitate to remember him in the way that his performances deserved, as a game-changing player who is directly responsible, with Messi, in creating the global love affair for football that we shouldn’t take for granted.
If we look at the 2000s, we had insane talents who are rightly revered: Zidane, Ronaldinho, Thierry Henry, Kaka, Rivaldo. These names garner a deification among the permanently online, their careers chopped into incredible montages. But all of those players shone immensely bright in shorter bursts - from 2006/07 until 2018/19 Ronaldo has a montage of his own for each year.
That is a level of consistency at the very top that is only matched by Messi, and it’s not even close. Diego Maradona fleeted in and out of brilliance for a number of reasons. Much of Pele’s career is unavailable to watch. And the original Ronaldo had three seasons at his true peak before injuries lessened his explosiveness.
It’s no slight or shame against Ronaldo to lose out to Messi, whose level will never be repeated even if we’re still playing football a thousand years from now. Ronaldo is a once-in-a-lifetime talent who happened to somehow stumble into the poor fortune of a better one being there at exactly the same time.
So my advice is to ignore whatever version of Ronaldo this is, and don’t consider for a second that he is ‘tarnishing his legacy’. That’s bullshit. Ronaldo has already transcended football and his position on the podium of all-time greats is unimpeachable. Let’s just hope it ends soon and we can get back to remembering just how incredible a player he truly was.
