Cristiano Ronaldo: The Face of Arrogance

Cristiano Ronaldo isn’t the best player in history. In fact, he’s not even one of them.

Last Thursday night, in a glitzy ballroom in Paris, Portugal’s very own living hero Cristiano Ronaldo picked up the prestigious Ballon D’or, drawing him level with Lionel Messi, with both players now having clasped their hands on the trophy a record five times.

Since 2008, a staggering ten Ballon D’Ors have been handed out by FIFA and France Football comparably (feel old yet?), but between then and now, football’s most worthy individual prize has been shared by just two players: Ronaldo and his greatest rival and adversary, Lionel Messi.

This isn’t a debate piece on who is better – that sort of thing is getting old. Instead, the focus will be on this year’s recipient of the award – and the subsequent discussion that has surrounded his victory in the two days since.

After the award, his manager at Real Madrid, Zinedine Zidane, himself regarded as one of history’s best players, had something to say about his trusty left winger.

‘The stats speak for themselves. He is the best player in the history of football.’

Stats. Ah, stats, eh? They prove everything and anything. They work, apparently, even when other stats overrule those stats. Because they’re ignored.

Ronaldo himself had something to say about it as well, when he was interviewed by France Football, the magazine who invented the award and has presented it to the world’s best player since the inaugural event in 1956.

‘I am the best player in history. No player has got as many individual trophies as me. I respect everyone’s opinion, but I don’t see anyone better than me. No footballer can do things that I can’t do myself.’

And there you have it. According to the man himself, he is the best player in history. Wasn’t it just a matter of time before we finally heard him say something like that?

After all, time has passed, and Ronaldo has come a long way since his hair-raising performance for Sporting Lisbon against Manchester United in 2003. It’s been almost ten years since that free-kick against Portsmouth, even. Ronaldo, these days, is less of a name, and more a business. Real Madrid and Portugal jerseys with his name on the back sell millions over the globe, and he’s got his own clothing line. He’s a household name and is worshipped and idolised by children everywhere. And teenagers. And men. Even full grown men try to look like him, wear their hair like him and dress like him. He’s one of the richest sportsmen in the world and endorses a multitude of brands, including FIFA, Nike and Calvin Klein. There’s even a statue of him on his hometown island of Madeira, and he opened his own museum in 2013. The most astonishing thought of it all is that he’s still an active player, never mind retired or deceased.

 

His plethora of adoring fans appear to have no end to which they will defend him – his football, his attitude, his way of life. It seemed almost impossible to think someone could be worshipped as highly until he stepped into the spotlight.

But he has his critics too. There’s a lot of people who don’t like him. And there’s a lot of people who do like him who unfortunately seem to be blinded by the dazzling rays of his golden brown tan and the glisten of his manicured nails. But it’s not just a few. The Messi-Ronaldo debate will always be divisive. But every single person who is on Ronaldo’s side needs a wake-up call. And that includes every one of the proportion of journalists who voted for Ronaldo in this year’s Ballon D’Or, leading him to win by a healthy stretch of a margin, for the second year in a row ahead of Lionel Messi.

The statistics

For me, it is mind-boggling. Where has this notion that Ronaldo is even within an arm’s length of Messi in terms of ability come from? There’s at least a light year between them.

Before the anger erupts, let’s focus on 2017 first, when there is simply no valid argument that can prove he deserved the prize.

Self-admittedly, I didn’t watch Thursday’s ceremony, but from a lot of post-research, it’s clear to see that the bookies and the sports outlets were backing the Madrid man. He was ‘the favourite’, as they say. But it’s only in hindsight that you begin to realise how absurd it is that he was in the top three – never mind out on top.

Zidane and Ronaldo himself talk about statistics. So many goals in so many games, they say. But what about the rest of the ‘statistics’, the bits that actually give a reflection of how he is as a passer of the ball, a dribbler, a defender, a team player? Let’s have a look.

The Ballon D’or 2017 is awarded to the best footballer of 2017. Not hard to understand, right?

Alright, so in history, he’s scored a few. 420 goals in 413 club games for Real Madrid is an astonishing record - out of this world, in fact. No one can argue with that. It’s legendary and the sheer volume of goals he’s scored, especially from a wing position, warrants him a good status in footballing history.

But there is a snag.

And forgive this opinion for coming from someone with a negative mindset of the player, but he simply has so many shots that some of them are bound to go in. It stems, simply, from greed.

This season, Ronaldo has averaged 6.6 shots per game in the league. That tally is the highest in Europe’s top 5 leagues – out of an incredible 1809 players, ranked by WhoScored.com. He’s had 73 shots in 11 games so far – and scored four goals, as of Saturday’s win against Sevilla. That’s an average of 18 shots for every goal – meaning just 5.4% of his shots find the back of the net. It doesn’t exactly scream ‘prolific talent’ to me. Even last season, he failed to convert 80% of his shots, according to stat website Squawka. How can he be the best player ever if he doesn’t know how to finish?

Cristiano Ronaldo, until Saturday's game against Sevilla in which Real Madrid routed to a 5-0 victory, Ronaldo had scored two league goals this season. TWO – and it’s mid-December. Remember, the league starts in August, so that’s a whole four months – a third of a year – in which he managed to net just twice. In fact, 2017, up until the announcement, brought him a league total of just 18 goals. Messi, contrastingly, scored 38. Any explanation yet?

Ronaldo's statistics as compared with
Messi's this season in the league.

This season, Ronaldo’s stat sheet, contrary to his and his manager’s belief, doesn’t exactly paint him in a golden light. In fact, it doesn’t paint him in any light.

Since the start of 2017-18, in the league, Ronaldo’s pass success rate has been an abysmal 79.4 in the league and just 80 in the Champions League. The former is the fourth worst in the Real Madrid squad, the latter the second worst for players who’ve played in the CL for the club this season.

To add insult to injury, he’s caught offside an average of 1.5 times per game in both competitions, has just three assists in sixteen games so far and hasn’t made a single tackle OR interception in either the league or CL.

Still think he’s all that?

The man behind the image

As mentioned earlier, his fans seem to entertain no limit on the distance they’ll go to defend his honour.

But that doesn’t just include statistics. That includes his character, his attitude, his persona, his image. All of which are inferior to Lionel Messi.

Ever since he became a world phenomenon, Ronaldo has milked and milked every last drop out of the fame and fortune and glamour that he can from his footballer’s lifestyle.

It happens on the pitch too. Occasionally, he’ll act like he cares when someone else has scored, or when they’ve set a goal up for him. Marcelo is what he might call a proper friend on the football pitch – they celebrate to together and form a partnership on the left wing. But that doesn’t mean he isn’t greedy, or selfish. Marcelo is seemingly just like the rest – a player content with living in his shadow as to enjoy his own relative amounts of fame, to pat him on the head and to feed his ego whenever he scores one of his twenty shots that actually go into the net.

Normally, it’s the same routine. Someone doesn’t pass to him, and he waves his arms in the air. Someone misses a chance, and he stomps the floor and cries out in anger hysterically. Someone scores – and he stops, incandescent to the fact that it’s not him who’s scored – before realising that football is in fact a team game, and he should probably jog over to celebrate with his teammates, even if it is starkly unemotional and he’s only pretending to care.

In terms of the ‘best in history' argument, it’s not worth talking about. There isn’t even a shot for him against Messi, who scored fifty league goals in one season. FIFTY. Give this ‘he hasn’t won an international trophy’ stuff a rest. If we’re sticking to individual performance, as the man himself likes to focus on, then shouldn’t we be focusing on individual performance, not team-based performance?

Where have our morals gone? What happened to rooting for the underdog, wishing for the humble but worthy competitor to come out on top? It seems football is no longer a fairy tale. It’s a breeding ground for egotistical, obnoxious people, who are more in love with themselves than it’s possible to fathom, to be showered in applause and lavished with praise and acclaim from people who look past the actual football and towards where the money lies.

Madeira Airport has been renamed
Cristiano Ronaldo international airport in his honour

He doesn’t need any more plaudits or praise. He polishes his ego enough himself. The museum of him on the island of Madeira was opened by him. He named his own son after himself. He’s even got an airport named after him. It’s just embarrassing.

The obvious

If you look past all the statistics, all the numbers, and simply focus on what you see on the pitch, it makes it even more difficult to comprehend how anyone, not least himself, could crown him the ‘best player in history’.

Arrogance has never been a more apt term.

In all fairness, Ronaldo has come a long way since he was a thin, gangly winger at Manchester United. He’s a force of nature now – and the way he’s adapted his body and built himself up to match the needs of his game is astounding and should be applauded. He has a ferocious shot, great strength, a good turn of pace and an uncanny heading ability.

But it’s the other aspects of his game that lead me, and should lead anyone, to completely disregard any nod towards the idea that he is one of the greatest of all time, or even close to Lionel Messi, in terms of footballing ability.

Messi has it all. He can show a defender the ball and drag it away from them in the space of half a second. He can run at a blistering pace with the ball glued to his feet. He can finish from anywhere, and put the ball in the very corner of the net. he doesn’t shoot at the goalkeeper like Ronaldo does. He creates triangles, and intricate interplays with his teammates. Ronaldo doesn’t play with his team. He gets the ball, and he shoots. That’s just about it.

The truth is, he’s very easy to dislike. And it’s not even like that’s a new thing. It started years ago.

Ronaldo has been showboating and cocking around on the pitch for years. He’d deliberately rile players up by trying to humiliate them, as seen by how James Morrison earnt himself a red card by trying to take him out in 2007 when United played Middlesbrough. He still does step-overs and back-heels to try and impress people, which don’t help the play at all, but instead just serve to massage his ego and balloon his head to twice the size it already was.

It would be acceptable, supposedly, if these ‘skill moves’ and displays of cockiness were completely harmless to himself and the team. The problem is, his displays of selfishness and 'ball-hogging' mean that opportunities that could've been converted through a simple square pass, or a play that could've progressed with the ball being sent out wide rather than being shot from 40 yards, go begging. And the even bigger problem is that he gets away with it, let off, and seems to receive special treatment from managers and fans, just because he is who he is.

His arrogance gets in the way.

His team-mates seem to feel the need to pass to him whenever possible to spare themselves a rollicking. He seems to be put on a pedestal by every manager because they’re afraid to come between him and his cry-baby, I-want-it-all-right-now attitude. He simply acts like a child. The whole of the Portuguese national football team is built around him, and it’s weird to watch. Take a look yourself. It appears that the coaching strategy they’ve been taught is as basic as ‘pass to Ronaldo.’ That seems to be the first thought of every player as they receive the ball. Every passage of play has to go through him. They’re wary of where he is. Get it to him and he’ll score, they think.

He’s just admitted in an interview, in as many words, that all he cares about is himself. German journalist Rafa Honigstein told the BBC this week that he thinks Ronaldo ‘cares more about individual awards than trophies for Real Madrid.’ The more you think about that, the more you kick yourself for not realising it before. Ronaldo doesn’t care about his team. He doesn’t celebrate when someone else scores. He celebrates when he scores. And if he hasn’t scored and his team wins, he’ll be disappointed, simply because he hasn’t found the net.

Love him or hate him, Cristiano Ronaldo will go down in history as one of football’s all-time greats, justified or not. He shouldn’t have won this year’s Ballon D’or, but after a while, it’ll probably get to the point where no-one cares about that trophy anyway; after all, it’s probably all just for marketing purposes.

He always has and always will divide opinion, and the rivalry between him and Messi will continue for years after their careers have gone by. But the truth is, Ronaldo isn’t even the undisputed best player of our generation.

And if that’s the mark of the best player in history, then the world’s gone to dust.