An ode to Ronaldo (no, not the Portuguese one)

Here's a debate for you...who is the greatest footballer since Maradona?

It's an interesting argument, one that means a lot to me as it is essentially the same question as "who is the greatest footballer of my lifetime?" - I am only old enough to remember football after the 1990 World Cup.

Some might say that there is a plethora of candidates amongst current players, whether it be the apparent reincarnation of Maradona, Lionel Messi, or his teammate Xavi, the master of tiki-taka, or their Clasico nemesis, Cristiano Ronaldo, a man whose ability to do anything with a football is equalled only by his ego and his penchant for petulance.

Go back a little and you have Kaka', the Brazilian schemer who dominated Serie A for years with Milan, but whose reputation has been blunted by persistent injury problems since his 2009 move to Madrid and a mediocre 2010 World Cup. And what about Ronaldinho, the buck-toothed magician with a seemingly infinite box of tricks, who fall from grace after the 2006 tournament was even more rapid than his rise?

Retreat to the millennium and you have one Zinedine Zidane, the Algerian-born French international with the distinctive bald head which delivered two goals in the 1998 final in Paris, who won pretty much everything there was to win at club level in Italy and Spain, and at international level, and whose wondrous control, skill and eye for the killer pass made him one of the few players glorious enough to be remembered for something other than headbutting an opponent in a World Cup Final.

The list of World Player of The Year winners in the nineties includes many more
icons: yet more Brazilians such as centre-forward Romario and the beguiling Rivaldo; George Weah, the almost complete centre-forward who led Milan's attack for years and who was denied international glory only by the misfortune of having to represent Liberia; "the divine ponytail" Roberto Baggio, about whom everything was divine except the ponytail itself; Marco Van Basten, the Dutchman who was the most lethal of strikers.

And let's not leave out the other greats who played deeper on the pitch, such as the lung-busting German Lothar Matthaus, or his doppelganger (in style at least) a few years further on, Matthias Sammer. The seemingly ageless Italian defenders Franco Baresi and Paolo Maldini deserve more than just a mention in dispatches for their services. And many would say that the Great Dane Peter Schmeichel rivals mythical names such as Banks and Yashin for the title of greatest goalkeeper.

But anyone who has followed the beautiful game over the last twenty years will note the glaring omission from the list enough. Most of them will look back and think "how on earth did he not end up the greatest of them all?"

And yet, when you type "Ronaldo" into wikipedia, you now get Cristiano Ronaldo as default, then Ronaldo Assis de Moreira - Ronaldinho's real name.

Talk about a fall in stock.

But for the period between the 1994 and 1998 World Cups, Ronaldo was THE MAN. Just look at the stats - between 1994 and 1996 he scored 54 goals in 57 games for PSV Eindhoven, then 47 in 49 games during his one season at Barcelona, then 34 in 47 games in his first year at Internazionale. They were hardly tap-ins either; Ronaldo was six foot tall and stocky, but blessed with exhilarating pace and acceleration, accompanied with outstanding close control. Give him the ball anywhere in the 18 yard box, and it would end up in the net. No wonder he was World Player Of The Year in 1996 and 1997. As satellite television and the Champions League turned football into global entertainment, so Ronaldo was the first superstar.

He went into France '98 as the main attraction...but after four goals in the earlier rounds, he allegedly suffered some sort of fit the night before the final (though this does not ever seem to have been confirmed) and was left off the original team sheet, only to be restored before kickoff. It was no surprise that he had a shocker. Eighteen months later, he buggered his knee for the first time; between November 1999 and Christmas 2001 he played only one match. But he returned to fitness in time for Japan and Korea - though some unkind (and probably accurate) folk suggested the stockiness had turned to flab - and despite an ridiculous haircut, with a semicircle of forehead hair on an otherwise shaven skull, he took the star billing he had been denied four years earlier. Eight goals (including both in the final) and the tournament golden boot completed a redemption almost so corny it could have been scripted by Richard Curtis.

A mega-money move to the Galactico clan at Real Madrid followed, as admittedly did lots of goals over the next 3 seasons. But the bursts of acceleration were briefer, the waistline wider, the frown deeper. Germany 2006 showcased a man who, even at 29, was past his best. Over the last five years, up to his retirement this week, "The boy O" as referred to in Only An Excuse (as in "Ronald O") faded from view, with some nice pay days back in Italy and then in Brazil. The numbers look good - 350 club goals, 62 international ones, including the most ever in World Cups. Three World Player Of The Year awards (for he won in 2002 as well) do not lie.

While Ronaldo was brilliant, he was not the best ever, for me. He just didn't do it for long enough - three seasons of genius do not a Pele make. Not by a long shot. But for a gammy knee, he probably could have been. This buck-toothed Brazilian was what Alan Shearer (in an "expert" Match Of The Day analysis) would call A Player.

A bloody good one, too, deserving of a lot more fanfare that he's been getting.

L.