HE SHOOTS... HE SCORES!!! ANOTHER ACE-IN-THE-HOLE FOR CR7. BY SANDRA HARRIS. ©

 

HE SHOOTS… HE SCORES!!! ANOTHER ACE-IN-THE-HOLE FOR CR7.

BY SANDRA HARRIS. ©

Ah, Jaysis, Ireland, what are yiz like? Losing at football again. Last night, we lost to Portugal in a World Cup qualifier. Two-one. But all our pundits said that that was the best we’d been at losing in ages, so it’s all G. Meaning, we’re edging ever closer to, maybe, someday, actually nearly winning a game, or, at least, losing so well that it’s almost the same as winning. That’s hilarious and so typically Irish.

We sometimes beat really piddly teams like, say, the Faroe Islands or Gibraltar, where the footballers’ main job is not footy at all but farming or bee-keeping or being a fisherman or something. Then we act all big and important for a bit but put us up against virtually any country with a decent team and we fall apart.

Remember Italia ’90, our proudest footy moment ever? The song clearly said that we were going to ‘inflict our game’ on the opponents, and how many goals did we score? Two. Two? I can’t work this out with just two (Wonka Bars),’ said the teacher in WILLY WONKA AND THE CHOCOLATE FACTORY, ‘we’ll say two hundred…!’  Two hundred goals? The Irish team would have to live an awfully long time to score that many goals.

I’ll probably be skinned alive by any Ireland fans reading this for saying that, because everyone knows that Jack Charlton replaced Saint Patrick as our national saint after Italia ’90. We have the best fans in the world, says every Irish team ever, with mushy sentiment in their voices and real tears in their eyes.

And, sure, yes, we’re great at the wearing of the green and the waving of the giant inflatable green plastic things at the matches, and the way we belt out every verse of The Fields of Athenry when we’re losing would dissolve the hardest of hearts.

But, erm, excuse me here, but it’s not a World Cup to judge who has the best fans, sadly, but a World Cup of playing football. There are no major tournaments judging a country by their fans. Just football tournaments. And that’s where we fall down…

Anyway, I’m not really writing this to vent my spleen on the Irish football team. We have to talk about Cristiano Ronaldo. (Instead of Kevin for a change.) Didja see him last night? After a fairly frustrating first half of the game and a shit start to the second half, he scored a great goal and equalised with an Ireland who’d scored one goal themselves and thought they were away in a hack. Those poor fools, bless ‘em.

Then he scored an even better goal, winning the game and simultaneously breaking Iranian footballer Ali Daei’s record of most international goals scored for his country, and that’s when things hotted up. Off came the shirt with the legendary Number Seven on the back.

Out came the famous abdominals- weren’t they magnificent!- and Ronaldo tore around the pitch, roaring to the fans and flexing his muscles and alpha male-ing it like a Daddy woolly mammoth returning home to his family with something very torn and bleeding in his mouth for the missus to cook.

Watching this display was positively the most fun I’ve had since before the pandemic. And, isn’t it weird, but if anyone else acted like this, an Irish player, say, we’d all be, like, what a wanker! Look at him showboating like that, the prick. Scarleh for his ma for havin’ him, as we say here in Ireland, which basically means, what an effing tosser, the state of him!

But, because it’s Ronaldo, it’s totally okay, see, because that’s Ronaldo. That’s what he’s like. You can say what you like about him- and people slate him mercilessly because they’re jealous- but he’s the Mick Jagger-John Lennon-Freddie-Mercury-and-David-Bowie-all-rolled-into-one of football. He’s a rock star, a god, a vision of loveliness and perfection.

And he likes to win. Winning is super-important to him. I love the way he celebrates every goal as if it’s the winning one. And the way he’s so focused on his goal, excuse the pun, his goal being to win every match. On the rare occasions when he misses a penalty or his team is not playing so well, you can clearly see the frustration on his handsome face.

An Irish player would probably laugh and shrug off a missed penalty with the words: ‘Ah shure, lookit, what can you do?’ But not Ronaldo. He’s ambitious, fiercely competitive and he wants to win, and he doesn’t give a fiddler’s feck who knows it, either. 

I know that winning isn’t everything in life, but living your best life and being the best you you can be in your chosen field- excuse the pun again- does matter, and Ronaldo clearly knows that and practises it faithfully, which I love.

Some folks slag him off for having the bad taste to want to actually win something instead of just saying in a self-deprecating way that they don’t mind who wins, as long as the fans get to enjoy a good game of football. Bollocks to that. I applaud Ronaldo for his honesty and his passion for winning and for life. Every time he celebrates a goal, he’s celebrating life. Long may he continue to do so.

Of course, the ref (also a Ronaldo fan, methinks) had to book him for whipping off the old kit on the pitch in the middle of a game, but he was smiling all over his face when he held up that yellow card. And Ronaldo didn’t give a monkey’s left testicle either, even though he now has to miss the next match and Portugal may struggle without him. But what does it matter? That shirt categorically, unequivocally and absolutely has got to come off at a moment like that and that’s all there is to it.

And then Ronaldo was presented with two grand big balls to celebrate his record-breaking achievement. That million-dollar grin never gleamed brighter. And I, for one, went to bed happy for him. It’s going to be an interesting season at Man. United, that’s for sure. And, to anyone who complains that it’s not going to be all about Man. United any more, it’s going to just be all about Ronaldo the superstar, I’d just say: ‘Don't you like to win, then…?’