Preview: It is like as if Cristiano Ronaldo has never really left the building. But then with the Portuguese being the most expensive footballer in the world after the summer transfer window which saw him move from Manchester United to Real Madrid in record-breaking amount and overtaking Zinedine Zidane’s transfer fee when the former France international moved to Real from Juventus, there’s a lot the Portuguese will have to live up to. While there are those who cried foul over the amount of money being offered to Manchester United for Ronaldo, yours truly as a Manchester United supporter still have mixed feelings on the day when the news has finally been broken after two years of almost endless football transfer drama. In the latest edition of the weekend unofficial football focus series’s mini series of footballing moments, yours truly looked back at the drama that once was which was two years in the making as far as she is concerned.
People say the departure of Cristiano Ronaldo to Real Madrid is a time for the likes of Nani, Wayne Rooney to step up at Manchester United. People had wondered whether Ronaldo’s departure from Manchester United to the Spanish capital is a sign that Spanish football is about to catch up with the Premier League. But then there are those who cried foul over the amount of money Real had offered to Manchester United for Ronaldo, in view of the current worldwide economic climate.
For everything which happened in the early days of the football transfer window in the summer, it seemed all so unprecedented to me as a Manchester United supporter. I knew it was a matter of time Cristiano Ronaldo would move to play for Real Madrid because he had said so before of wanting to play for the Spanish giants, but why do I have mixed feelings about it? But what is clear though, I will remember the goals Ronaldo had used to score for my club and that is it. What is not so clear though is will Portugal still manage to somehow qualify for the World Cup next year. While the likes of Brazil, Spain, and England are definitely heading to South Africa next year, Portugal’s World Cup fate is still hanging in the balance. What, one may ask; you mean Cristiano Ronaldo’s Portugal may not head to South Africa? But then again, it is not as if this is the first time the world’s biggest football tournament could be lacking someone of Ronaldo’s stature. For Portugal, how about Argentina’s well-documented qualification woes? A tournament without Ronaldo and Argentina’s Barcelona star Lionel Messi? And the man who apparently got the boot from Real Madrid due to the dour style of play is heading for South Africa next year with the England squad which has scored the most number of goals in the World Cup’s European qualifying zone so far? Stranger things have happened before.
That man in question is England’s Italian coach Fabio Capello. Way before I know he will be dominating the TV screens whenever England is playing, he was the last Juventus coach before the full scale of the calciopoli was being made known (he was not implicated though, according to reports) and eventually headed to Spain for his second stint as Real Madrid coach after the first stint in the 1996/97 season (where in his first stint he met a certain late Sir Bobby Robson, who was coaching Real’s eternal rivals Barcelona then). Capello’s second Spanish stint did not last long either. But five months after getting the boot in Spain despite ending the club’s domestic title drought, the England job was presented itself to the Italian after England never qualified for the Euro 2008 tournament. The job he had always wanted all along (yes, he had said before that managing his native Italy has never interest him), after being rejected twice. While he had said more than once that the England job is his last, I have always wondered how he will perceive Cristiano Ronaldo’s mega-money move to Real Madrid on the basis that he had two coaching stints at the club where the Portuguese is currently playing. The answer finally came about two weeks or so ago when he was being interviewed on Marie Claire’s Italian edition (I kid you not). And I got mixed signals from how the English press reported the details coming out of the interview. First the Italian seemed to imply that Ronaldo don’t worth all those money before saying that United did better business with his former employers than AC Milan when it comes to the case of Kaka.
Whatever the case it may be (the interview on Marie Claire’s Italian edition also revealed other interesting nuggets which are not relevant to use for this entry), it is the England coach’s comments on the transfer where I will begin on my looking back at the football transfer that was. It all somehow began in the shadows before Manchester United retained their domestic league title, before the dramatic Champions League win in Moscow, before the tournament which Cristiano Ronaldo did took part – Euro 2008 with Portugal. In other words, the football transfer was a two-year 'chase' in the making. At that time, German Bernd Schuster was the coach at Real Madrid. The former West Germany international who spent a large part of his playing career in Spain which included the Spanish giants (though he actually began at Barcelona after winning the European Championships at just 20 years of age) is supposed to be the antithesis of his Italian predecessor (yes, the man currently occupying the England hotseat...ahem). Well, Real Madrid managed to retain the league title in style and with matches to spare at the same time. But by then, the rumour mill was already in full swing. Or at least that is the case in Spain regarding Ronaldo. I should know, considering when he was asked about his future after Manchester United’s Champions League win in Moscow, he sounded evasive. Or that was the interpretation then.
It continued all the way to the Euro 2008 tournament, until Portugal was eventually eliminated by the tournament finalists Germany in the quarter-final. While it might had been sort of a big deal from the German perspective that they are through to the semi-final due to the Germany’s past two European Championship campaigns where each time they were out in the group stages after winning it in England in the 1996 version, I am not surprised which side the newspapers here were on, or at least in The Straits Times here then. The tournament was being seen from the Premier League angle here, due to the league’s popularity in my country. Lamenting the disappointing performance of Portugal, especially Cristiano Ronaldo. I am a Manchester United supporter but during the tournament, my team was Germany (this was still in the days when I was still supporting the German national team).
The age-old football cliché of no one is bigger than the team sprung to my mind then. While it was amazing it was a turnaround from the Portuguese in the Premier League considering of the treatment he got in the aftermath of the 2006 World Cup quarter-final encounter between Portugal and England with people expecting something from him during the Euro 2008 tournament, I had to play the Devil’s Advocate during the Euro 2008 tournament. But that was the beginning of me having the sneaky feeling he is being seen as kind of over-rated from the German perspective (though from the English perspective, the sentiment is that is Franck Ribery really worth all those money Bayern Munich had put over him during the summer even if the English press like to see him in the Premier League). It especially happened again when I read how the German press reported on the English press reaction to his transfer from Manchester United to Real Madrid with me remembering well from Die Welt website where it reported that no one in England will miss his departure where my other football sources all said about the same thing about the English press being divided on the move. But it is not as if the German press had never once tried to stoke up the rumours where the German news agency DPA once ran a report about it, and this was when Cristiano Ronaldo was still at Manchester United. I almost yelled ‘Scandal!’ then.
But that is the least of my worries in the previous football season on the club football front. I had a wry smile during the football transfer window in the summer as someone watching and following the Bundesliga when keeping track of all the speculation surrounding Bayern Munich’s Franck Ribery. Because it reminded me of the Cristiano Ronaldo situation all over again in the previous season before what happened in the summer. German football may feel the right to be aggrieved when one of their star players has been constantly linked with a move elsewhere, especially to Spain. Spare a moment on how this was received in England when Ronaldo was still being constantly linked with a move to Real Madrid, with it has been pointed out before that Madrid-based sports newspaper Marca had a hand in it. Ronaldo is probably the reason, even if I don’t bring in the fact that I support Manchester United, that the Premier League is what it is these days. He is the star player of the Premier League, just like how Ribery is the star player in the Bundesliga. Who likes it when the star player of the league is constantly linked with a move elsewhere? Throughout the entire previous season, I get the feeling that Real Madrid is been seen in the English eyes (even if ironically enough, the England coach’s previous job was at the Spanish giants!) as the club just want to get Ronaldo by hook or by crook. When even at one time Manchester United manager Sir Alex Ferguson famously declared that he would not sell a virus to that ‘mob’, you get the feeling the impression of the Spanish giants in England has hit a new low all the more for what they stand for in European football. It never helped that when Real Madrid met Liverpool in the last 16 of the Champions League in the previous season, they lost to Liverpool rather heavily at Anfield in the second-leg.
So when Ramon Calderon left his presidency position at Real Madrid, it was greeted with glee in England on the departure of the man who would be remembered in England of apparently trying to engineer a move for Cristiano Ronaldo from Manchester United to Real Madrid (which Calderon said so after Ronaldo’s Real Madrid move was confirmed that a deal has long been struck). But then, the man who is lawyer by profession left the club under the shadow of vote-rigging allegations at the club’s general assembly. That was before the man who was famous for the ‘galaticos’ era returned to the club, Florentino Perez. Those Ronaldo rumours returned once again. After the Kaka deal was done, came the news which would eventually turned the football world upside down just a few days later. It even left this Manchester United supporter...speechless. United announced on their website that they had accepted the offer and it is left to the player to negotiate the terms. I was almost being knocked out when I looked at the amount offered. Ronaldo has become the most expensive footballer in the world, after Zinedine Zidane. He had made the news of Kaka moving from AC Milan to Real Madrid became secondary almost instantly.
True, I was left feeling relieved when the news was announced on the website of Manchester United which came before Real Madrid confirmed the news on their website as well. After those rumours back and forth, there is finally a conclusion to this long drawn-out saga. I had enough reading about it. But that was when the reality started to sink in. The amount Real Madrid had came waving at the club I support, goodness me. Everybody in the world of football is going to start having their opinions, especially all the more in view of the current worldwide economic climate. I was right when majority of the reactions was that people are crying foul at the amount of money being offered, coming at a time when football is not being spared from the economic crisis too. There were also questions raised as to whether Cristiano Ronaldo really worth all those money being offered. I have no idea myself but, I know he will be under pressure to justify the tag of being the most expensive footballer when he is in Spain. But what is intriguing is that while UEFA president Michel Platini had voiced his displeasure over the amount offered, his FIFA counterpart thought otherwise. That left me surprised, considering how Blatter is always on the same hymn sheet with Platini over such matters.
But while people can have their own say on the matter where most of the time it is rather unpleasant on how Real Madrid conducted themselves in the football transfer window in the summer, it has got the English press asking is Spanish football is about to steal English football’s thunder now that the Premier League’s most famous footballer probably since the days when Thierry Henry was still at Arsenal is off to sunny Spain. It was also revealed around the same time of the financial aspects playing in England and Spain. That really put Spain ahead of England. It is the tax law which will come into effect in Britain next year which is going to put high-income earners at a disadvantage. The tax law is more welcomed in Spain. People can argue that it is the TV rights where Spain lost out to England considering it is a centralised one in the latter and not in the former, but where the Spanish football momentum continued after the Spanish national team won the Euro 2008 tournament last summer before Barcelona totally swept the football purists off their feet with their brand of football and they capped it off with Champions League glory over Manchester United in Rome in May this year...this is no fluke. People can also argue that it has always been most of the time a two-horse race between eternal rivals Real Madrid and Barcelona in the Spanish top-flight but over the years on the European front, Spain had sent more representatives than their English counterparts.
There were fears that the departure of Cristiano Ronaldo from England to Spain may signal that the Premier League is about to lose its lustre and the claim of being the ‘best football league in the world’ (paraphrasing Sky Sports). But if the current Premier League season is anything to go by so far and how Ronaldo’s former club has been doing at the moment, the Premier League has managed to cope well with the loss of the Portuguese. People may say that the other clubs which has always been United’s rivals for the league title will be able to close the gap but, as long as United manager Sir Alex Ferguson is still around, writing off the reigning league holders will be at one’s own peril.
And, Cristiano Ronaldo has managed to settle well in Spain, if his goals for his current club are anything to go by. He has managed to score at just about each match. While I am not like one of those female fans who go ga-ga over how he look as that is not my thing, I have since view Ronaldo’s Spanish adventure as another step in his career as he has won just about everything during his time in England. Considering when one looks back how he became the footballer he was during his time in England, he first came as an unknown. No matter how people will view him, he has managed to prove it with his goals. So come to think of it, the man who was once touted as David Beckham’s replacement at Manchester United...the club has managed to earn quite an amount by shipping him off to Spain. Not only that, to imagine he was not even the club’s first-choice signing when Ronaldinho was still at Paris St. Germain all those years ago before Barcelona won the race instead. To look back since, maybe it was a blessing in disguise after all.
But Cristiano Ronaldo’s Spanish move had also taught me that no footballer is unsaleable. Bayern Munich once declared that during the football transfer window in the summer over the case of Franck Ribery and I just go ‘Yeah right’ in my head. When even someone of Ronaldo’s stature left Manchester United for Real Madrid, what says of Ribery’s future even if reports said last week of the Frenchman hinting of an extended stay? I don’t believe in the unsaleable logic anymore since the day Ronaldo was officially a Real Madrid player.
Because it used to be me thinking he will be playing for the club I support forever. Until Cristiano Ronaldo talked of playing for the Spanish giants.
