Cristiano Ronaldo would need a friend to tell him how things are. But if he did, a moment later he wouldn’t be his friend anymore. He is probably right: he does not need advice, he knows how to make mistakes on his own. And as a professional. He will pay the consequences and not even all the accumulated fortune equals the price of the final disappointment to which he is giving himself up.
Ronaldo is a man only by destiny and, above all, will. When he scores he never indicates who made the pass, but himself. He doesn’t run towards his teammates, he waits for them. He doesn’t even dine with the push half, only with the third goalkeeper. Gluttony and avarice aside, he is a great testimonial of the deadly sins. He has a neo-Ptolemaic vision of the world: he revolves around it and for a while it was also true. Then there is this small inconvenience called time that crumbles walls, empires, civilizations, let alone leave a footballer intact.
By sculpting his hair and abdominals himself, he kept the external appearance almost unchanged, thus convincing himself that nothing has changed, he is always the king of cups, the one who planted roots at the Bernabeu and scored one free-kick out of two. Instead, things change and failing to adapt causes the curse of ridicule. It happens to almost everyone, the best in their sector, to have the thrill of success and believe that he can influence the market. It is a human defect. Ronaldo has only taken him to higher levels.
He thought he was enough for himself and for others. That history was an available object of his desire. To be able to go from Madrid to Turin without the product changing. To relive the splendor in Manchester. “Gatsby, you can’t recreate the past”, “Yes you can”. “Christian, the future cannot be conditioned”, “Yes you can”. How many errors in weight of gold. How much dislike towards coaches who have tried to make him think not so much with their ideas, but with space (pushing him where the ball arrives and he shouldn’t take it) and with time (“maybe half an hour, an hour, no eh ? All or nothing?”). He has taken, or has been granted, all the possible licenses, poetic and otherwise. Dedicated planes, special holdings, personal companies. With the cunning of the greats he remained a decisive player for non-decisive moments. The guy who shows up in a tuxedo at the condominium assembly. What now, rich man?
The latest mistake was to avoid Manchester United’s retirement before finding another accommodation. “Go to PSG, go to Barcelona”. Here, when the rumors are absurd it means that there is nothing to say. “Rome announces it tomorrow”, and it’s over: you are the martian halved, the erotic dream turned into pornography. Calling out before it’s late. Govern the decline, descending with arms raised, with a smile. There is still a World Cup, one last chance. It doesn’t matter where he takes the plane from. Not how many games he will have played, how many goals he scored, if he played the Champions League group, if he returned to his Sporting in Lisbon. He matters how he gets there, inside. We have seen a thousand times in the last few days the images of the rebirth and triumph of Paolo Rossi, who had been in purgatory for two years, lost in Perugia, fragile, unprepared and full of doubts. Humble. And for this popular. Expected by a coach he almost asked not to. From comrades who loved his rummaging inside his own weakness with the sense of guilt for not knowing how to help them. Here, this is not Ronaldo. And for this he will perhaps have another round of jousting, but he will never win a world championship, nor will he have a friend waiting for him down the street when he gets dark.