HOW DO YOU SOLVE A PROBLEM LIKE RONALDO...? BY SANDRA HARRIS.

 

HOW DO YOU SOLVE A PROBLEM LIKE RONALDO...?

BY SANDRA HARRIS.

Okay, brace yourselves there, lads. A woman is going to be talking about football in a minute. But don't worry, I don't pretend to know much about tactics and stats about who was on the bench for whom in such and such a game back in nineteen-hundred-and-forty-seven. I don't intrude on this type of male preserve.

For me, football is all about Blokes I Fancy, and I make no bones about it. I discovered Cristiano Ronaldo back in 2012 when he was playing in the Euros for Portugal and for Real Madrid the rest of the time.

I wrote a poem about fancying him which was published in a wimmin's zine called Vadge. Classy, innit? Anyway, I've kept an eye on his career ever since and I can't believe that now he's forty-one and on the verge of retiring from international football forever.

He's in the news because he's had a falling out with Portugal's head coach, Jorge Jesus, over not getting to play in last Sunday night's Nations League game against Norway. Ronaldo didn't start and was on the bench, was seen warming up at half-time but never got called off the bench to play.

Now, after a chat with no less a personage than the President of the Portuguese Football Federation, he's packed his bags and flown home. He's released a statement to the effect that, when he's ready, he'll tell the real truth about what motivated him to leave the national team at such a crucial time. (Tell-all interview with Daddy Piers, anyone...?)

There's so much to unpick here. Firstly, Ronaldo, though still in obviously excellent shape, is forty-one now. He's not twenty-eight anymore. Which of us is? Old Father Time comes for all of us. It's sad but it's true.

And yes, I do believe he probably expects the team to continue to centre itself around him because he's such a massive legend, both on the Portuguese and the world stage. And I believe the Portuguese national team have been doing that, for the most part.

Everything has to go through Ronaldo. It's like when we were at school and the teacher would urge you to always throw the ball to the best girl on the team, which was never me, by the way. I was always the last to be picked for any sport. I will have my revenge one day. Oh wait, I said the quiet part out loud there. Shit.

Anyway, that game on Sunday night last, against Norway? Portugal actually won this game without Ronaldo, which he probably wasn't too happy about. He was on the bench and had supposedly been promised a game but it never happened.

If the coach, Jorge Jesus, saw his team playing well and thought that the addition of Ronaldo after the break might disturb the balance of play- if it ain't broke, don't fix it- then fair enough.

Maybe the younger players are a tiny bit inhibited by Ronaldo's presence on the team and can only let themselves go and play some fucking football when he's not there. And it's never a good idea to build a team around one man. That's a recipe for disaster. Whatever happened, Portugal played well that night.

If, however, the coach was leaving the world's biggest football star on the bench as a kind of power play- I'm the boss kind of thing and I say what goes- then I don't agree with that and think it was a shoddy way to treat a living legend.

I was also very much looking forward to seeing Ronaldo play against Norway's titan, Erling Haaland, who looks very much like he's going to be the player who inherits the crown when the all-time greats like Ronaldo and Messi have retired, but alas, it wasn't to be.

I honestly thought Ronaldo would retire after this summer's World Cup. Portugal were knocked out in the last sixteen by Spain, who then went on to beat reigning champions Argentina in the final.

I still cringe when I remember Ronaldo fiercely mouthing 'I'm back!' to the cameras when he scored two goals in one of the earlier matches against, erm, Uzbekistan. It's kind of like someone's elderly uncle with a greasy comb-over at a wedding thinking he can still pull the hot younger bridesmaids. Yes, exactly. Cringe. I love him but cringe.

Take Lionel Messi. My son thinks he's the real Greatest of All Time, aka the GOAT. I do not. You know what I think. Anyway, Messi won the World Cup with his native Argentina in 2022- the one where they put some kind of a woman's dress on him at the award ceremony- and everyone was delighted for him because he really wanted to win it before he retired.

I thought he'd quit while he was ahead and retire from international football. He didn't. He came back this year and lost the tournament to Spain, which must have been agonising after winning it so spectacularly in 2022.

But there isn't as much drama around Messi as there is around Ronaldo. Messi doesn't really do strops, hissy fits, mantrums, throwing-his-toys-out-of-the-pram or sulks like my boy CR7 does (I'm not blind to his faults, you know!), and, when he quietly retired from playing for his country on August thirty-first 2026, he did so with his dignity intact.

Ageing is not easy for anyone, but it must be especially hard for those, like supermodels or elite sportsmen, who are used to being in the public eye for their looks and the things they can do with their sleek, powerful bodies.

Poor Ronaldo is showing every sign of going through a midlife crisis. He's dyed his hair blonde on top. (It doesn't suit him.) There are rumours of a twenty-two-year-old mistress, which, as he only just married his long-time girlfriend and Baby-Momma Georgina over the summer, would be hard on his kids and new wife.

I saw a photo I wasn't crazy about lately as well in which an obviously ripped Ronaldo, dressed only in shorts, compares his teenage son Cristiano Ronaldo Jr.'s punier build unfavourably to his own magnificent muscles and abs. Much as I love him, there is a man who is deeply insecure about himself and the ageing process.

All that being said, I feel like he's done a huge amount for football and for Portugal and people should be grateful for that and lay off him at this tough time. He deserves respect after all his achievements in football, not ridicule and scorn just because he didn't choose to quit while he was ahead.

The Number Seven shirt should absolutely be retired or put in a museum and not, as someone said (I think it was Zlatan Ibrahimovic), to be handed out to the next guy like 'the spare kit in the cupboard.'

I wish Ronaldo well in whatever he does now. I really do. He's got his millions, his wife, his kids, his adoring mum and siblings and he still plays football every week for Al-Nassr FC in the Saudi League, for which he is paid an unbelievable sum of money. Hopefully it will be enough.