Injuries had started to take their toll on Ronaldo by the time he joined Real Madrid, but he still made a huge impact at the Bernabeu – not least on his debut.
For years, Real Madrid’s on-off president Florentino Perez has seen the value in recruiting World Cup stars.
Both Fabio Cannavaro and James Rodriguez had starred at the tournament before moving to the Bernabeu, and you sense Perez would have moved for Player of the Tournament Luka Modric in 2018 if he wasn’t already in the Spanish capital. Before all of them, though, there was Ronaldo.
Real Madrid were hardly in terrible shape back in 2002. They had just won the Champions League thanks to Zinedine Zidane’s volley against Bayer Leverkusen, making up for their failure to beat Barcelona to the domestic title.
They were in a contradictory position of the ‘Zidanes y Pavones’ project working by virtue of the European title but letting them down domestically, which meant that either way you shook it they needed to spend.
Ronaldo might have missed the bulk of the previous three seasons due to injury – he played more times for Brazil than for Inter in 2002 – but he was undoubtedly one of the world’s best, or would be if he could stay fit.
After all, this was a man who hadn’t just won the World Cup for his country: there was a strong argument that, without him there, Brazil wouldn’t have come close. He scored in all but one of his country’s matches, and no one else from either side scored in the Selecao’s semi-final or the final in Yokohama.
Put simply, it was Ronaldo’s tournament, and a Ballon d’Or was imminent, so why would this iteration of Real Madrid need anyone else? It didn’t even need to work immediately, but it absolutely did.
Real Madrid’s fans had to wait until October to see their new recruit, with injury keeping him out of the first three games of the season.
Los Blancos picked up seven points from those games and looked impressive in attack, and this may have made it easier for manager Vicente del Bosque to give the Brazilian time to reach full fitness, only introducing him as a substitute on debut.
However, Ronaldo was in no mood to waste any time. He knew as well as we did that his cruciate might go again at no notice, so the best solution was to score as many goals as possible before his body betrayed him again.
He replaced Javier Portillo as a substitute in the 63rd minute. In the 64th, he scored his first goal, helping set up an attack with a run…
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