Ronaldo only spent one season at Barcelona, but it was arguably the greatest of his career.
When we think of fame, there’s one thing that rarely crosses our mind: imagine being so high up, so unmatchable, that you’re known worldwide by a mononym. And then imagine, less than two decades on, that mononym being inherited by someone else when you shouldn’t even be done yet.
There’s no denying Cristiano Ronaldo has risen high enough for us not to need his forename, but when the moment came – not long after trading Manchester United for Real Madrid – his namesake will have preferred not to already be spoken of in the past tense.
When Cristiano moved to Madrid, Ronaldo Luis Nazario de Lima was still a couple of months shy of his thirty-third birthday. Yet he had already been lessened in the public eye, becoming ‘Ronaldo Nazario’, ‘Original Ronaldo’ or the far less flattering ‘Fat Ronaldo’, depending on who you asked.
While some of his contemporaries were still kicking about in Europe’s top leagues (Ruud van Nistelrooy, two months his senior, was still a Real Madrid player), Ronaldo was having one last go at rebuilding an injury-hit career which delivered plenty but somehow promised even more.
It seems strange to say such a thing of a player who top-scored in a victorious World Cup run, scored a Champions League hat-trick at Old Trafford as a visiting player, won trophies with six clubs in four countries and picked up two Ballons d’Or five years apart.
That description paints a picture of longevity and reliability, of a player whose reputation during his career couldn’t possibly be diminished, even post-retirement. The truth is very different, largely due to how much of his success came at such a young age.
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In fact, there is an argument that the Brazilian’s finest season came in the year he turned 20.
Plenty has been written about his hat-trick for Real Madrid against Manchester United in 2003, but another treble, all the way back in 1996, arguably gives more of a clue to why his younger self was so revered.
Ronaldo scored all three in Barcelona’s 3-2 victory over Valencia at Camp Nou that day, and he could easily have had six. And that isn’t a romantic reimagining of speculative efforts – it took some smart saves from the Valencia keeper and some uncharacteristically wayward finishing to keep the…
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