Ronaldo Interview

[Tipster]

The Revival Of The Fittest

The last World Cup ended disastrously for Ronaldo and in four
injury-plagued years since then he has hardly played at all. Now he is
healthy again and back in form. In an exclusive interview he explains
why Brazil can still be world champions, why he loves the Premiership -
and why fighting global poverty is now the greatest battle of them all

Sunday May 19, 2002

Gabriel Batistuta gave a classy response when asked back in December to
respond to the news that Ronaldo, seemingly recovered from injury at
long last, had scored his first competitive goal in two years. 'I am
very happy,' the Argentine striker said, 'because Ronaldo is football.'
It was classy because Batistuta knows that a fit Ronaldo is the young
pretender most likely to usurp his role as the king of Serie A
goalscorers; because Ronaldo plays for Internazionale - the team that
six months ago looked the best bet to steal the championship crown from
Batistuta's Roma; and because Ronaldo is Brazilian and Argentine
footballers, for reasons of historical rivalry, don't like Brazilian
footballers.

But then again it wasn't that classy. Because everyone in the football
world responded in much the same way. Everyone, including Italian fans
in stadiums all around the country, who turned away from the games they
were watching to applaud the news; including even the coach of the team
against which Ronaldo scored his goal. Brescia's Carlo Mazzone, whom
Inter had beaten 3-1, declared in the after-match press conference that
he was happy for Ronaldo. 'If we really had to concede a goal,' he
said, 'then I'm glad it was scored by Ronaldo.'

Why, in a game defined by the passion of its antagonisms, is there such
harmony around the figure of Ronaldo? Why do rival fans suspend their
habitual vindictiveness when the Brazilian hoves into view? Why does
everyone in football rally round him, in sickness and in health?

And how do you account for the almost universal despair which met the
news back in April 2000 that his knee had given way again, twisting
sickeningly like a rubber doll, just seven minutes into yet another
comeback game, an Italian cup semi-final at Lazio? The milk of human
kindness is not the first thing one associates with fans of the Roman
club. It tends to be in especially short abundance when the skin
pigmentation of a rival player happens to be a shade or two darker than
the southern European norm. But even the tifosi of SS Lazio were unable
to suppress a groan of distress when they saw the Brazilian collapse to
the ground in an agonising scream, or to restrain the instinct to
applaud him, almost praying that this did not mean the end of his
career, as he was stretchered off the field.

What's it all about? What is it that Ronaldo does to football people's
heads, turning them to sentimental mush? The answer has to be that for
most of the time since the 1998 World Cup he has played the part of the
tragic hero. And everyone loves a tragic hero, football fans
especially. It is also about art. And when a supreme exponent of the
art come along, someone who seems to possess that extra quality of
genius that separates the great from the merely very good, we all bow
down before him, we all want a share of him. Such players belong not
just to a club, not just to a country but to the human race. Pele was
such a player. So was Cruyff. And so, it seemed, was Ronaldo, World
Player of the Year aged 20 and 21.

But Ronaldo the supreme player has hardly been seen since his dismal
performance in the 1998 World Cup final. He has been plagued by a
series of serious injuries, beginning in Lecce in November 1998 in
which he ripped his knee ligament. As a result, the life of the most
celebrated footballer on the planet for most of the four years between
World Cup finals has consisted almost entirely of operations, long
convalescences and cruelly abortive comebacks. The latest, barely a
month ago, ended in more heartache in one sense, in that Inter's title
challenge faltered at the very last when a 4-2 defeat at Lazio on the
last day of the season gifted the scudetto to Juventus. A substituted
Ronaldo finished the game crying his eyes out on the sidelines.

Yet for Ronaldo personally the last month and a half has been among the
happiest times of his football career. After four years in limbo and
desperate uncertainty, he is back to full fitness and scoring great
goals in tough games. Mario Zagallo, the veteran Brazil coach, has even
gone so far as to predict that he will emerge like the phoenix to
become the star of the 2002 finals. So the question of his fitness was
the only place to start when Ronaldo talked to OSM in his only major
interview prior to this summer's finals. Was the injury nightmare over
now, was it really all over?

'Yes, yes,' he replied, with a steady, honest gaze. 'Definitely. It's
been very tough. It's been two years of sacrifice. But now it's over.
It's done. I've had a couple of muscular problems, yes, but regular,
normal stuff. The serious injury has been defeated. I am ready to
play.'

He looked it too. On some of his earlier comebacks he had looked
chubby, like a player does in his mid-thirties, a couple of years after
retirement. Now he appeared lean, fit and fresh: tall and lithe as a
light heavyweight boxer in running shoes, jeans, T-shirt and short
denim jacket. We met at the Inter training ground outside Milan, within
sight of the Alps, and his physical wellbeing seemed to be matched by a
mental one. He was bounding with confidence and optimism, every inch
the footballing superhero. Mature, self-possessed, a man seemingly at
peace with himself.

If he had indeed effected a full recovery he would find himself
converted into the patron saint of injured football players, I
suggested. He smiled politely and said that, no, there are plenty of
other patron saints out there already.

'We know when we begin our footballing careers that something like this
can happen to us,' he said in impeccable Spanish (which is impressive
as he has not lived in a Spanish-speaking country for five years, and
even then he lived in Barcelona for less than 12 months). 'We've had
lots of examples of great players who were seriously injured but made a
complete recovery. I, for example, followed really closely what
happened to Maradona when he was at Barcelona and broke his leg. What
happened to Zico at Flamengo. And then when I myself was injured, I had
a visitor at my house one day: Pele.'

His conversational style is lazy in a sensual Brazilian sort of way but
when he comes to the word Pele, he pauses for special emphasis, raises
the volume an octave or two. Pronounces the name the Brazilian way,
with a sharp accent on the final 'e': 'Pel¿!' He is proud as a little
boy that the greatest legend in the history of his mighty footballing
nation actually came to see him, at his house.

'Pele told me that during the 1966 World Cup in England he got badly
injured and that everybody told him he would never be able to play
again. And two or three years passed and still nobody believed he would
ever play at his best level again. But he did. He played in another
World Cup, in 1970. He won the World Cup, he was chosen the
competition's best player. So, in other words, examples like these that
I mention to you - Pele, Zico, Maradona - gave me the courage to
persevere.'

But there must have been moments of despair, when he came close to
abandoning hope? 'Abandon: never! But despair, yes, at the beginning.
Because after a couple of very serious injuries like mine you are
obviously very worried. But I never lost hope.' The haunting thing is,
of course, that a player's life is so short, and he has already seen
about a quarter of his best years frittered away.

'Yes, it is short. Most of all because we play such a huge amount
nowadays. So many championships, so many games. And you get so many
more injuries. But, well...there you are. That's the way it is. We have
to make the best of what we have.'


Pondering the best of what Ronaldo has - the money, the fame, the
glory- one is reminded that the sorrow one feels ought to be tempered
by the realisation that there are one or two people on the planet whose
suffering has been rather worse. Did he not feel a little guilty at
times for earning so much for so long without doing... well, anything
very much. The question stung him. For a fraction of a second he lost
his Copacabana cool. 'Absolutely not!' he exclaimed. 'An injury like
this one can happen to anyone. I didn't get injured because I wanted
to. I was just very unlucky, above all because it turned out to be such
a complicated injury that took so long to heal.'

It is a fair point, and in any case he has not actually been wasting
his time during his long football drought. He has been putting his name
to good use. Since February 2000 he has been a Goodwill Ambassador for
the United Nations.

In particular he is working with the United Nations Development
Programme, a body dedicated to combatting poverty and stimulating
greater co-operation between the rich and poor countries of the world.
The UNDP and the London advertising agency Leagas Delaney had come up
with the idea of building a fundraising campaign around an
internationally popular idol.

The choice came down to Ronaldo or Michael Jordan, until it became
clear that Ronaldo's appeal was far more global. 'It was a matter of
great pride for me to be chosen,' Ronaldo said.'I accepted because I
saw it as an obligation. I was already doing a lot of things on my own
with charities but then this opportunity came along to work with an
organisation like this, with such tremendous international credibility
and I saw it as a really great prize. To associate my name with the
United Nations is the best thing that could have happened to me.'

He insists he will remain dedicated to the cause of world poverty even
after his playing career comes to an end, but knows that getting back
to his best will help him help the UN.

'Yes. That might be true. But I hope to maintain my credibility after I
stop playing. Because, yes of course, now I play and I score goals and
children all over are mad about me. Not just poor children - all
children. We can make them really happy by the way we play, though I
have to say that it's the poor ones that I think of most, the ones who
can't come and watch the games at the stadium. We mean so much to them.
That's why I'm so committed to this work. Later, after you've stopped
playing, it's harder to have the same impact. But I will give it a go.
I want to continue doing this kind of work for ever.'

His work for the UN has seen him travel to Kosovo and last summer he
organised a game at the San Siro between Inter and the Nigerian
champions, Enyimba FC, to which 50,000 people turned up, all proceeds
to the UNDP. Ronaldo himself did a whip-round in the dressing room and
raised £40,000 from his team-mates.

For his first advertising campaign with the organisation Ronaldo was
asked to choose another celebrity with whom he would pose for a
fundraising photograph. Without hesitation, he chose Zinedine Zidane.
It was a strange choice in a way, given that the Frenchman had done
more than anyone to deny Ronaldo at the last World Cup, especially in
the final when the Brazilian - either because he was struck down by
stage fright, or because he suffered an asthma attack, or an epileptic
fit or whatever (to this day he refuses to say exactly what, and during
our interview it was the one subject he refused to discuss) - failed
dismally to rise to the occasion.

So why Zidane? 'Because he is a truly great player,' Ronaldo replies.
'Besides, he is a friend. And he thinks as I do in terms of the need to
help poor children, and the poor in general. We have this opportunity
because of who we are and how we are seen to do what we do, to help,
and we do it with great pleasure. He has the same goals as I have.
We're both really prepared to do everything we can to help this
organisation.'


That Ronaldo is now in Zidane's shadow as a player shows how quickly
the world moves on in football. Four years ago the Frenchman still had
much to prove, while Ronaldo, despite being nearly four years younger,
was generally accepted as the greatest footballer in the world. He had
it all. He was tall, he was strong, he had devastating pace, and he
scored goals. Dozens of them. He could poach them in the area; he could
pick the ball up on the halfway line, beat four defenders and find the
net; he could bend balls into the back of the net from outside the box.

But his trademark was his ability to shift speed and charge into the
penalty area, in the blink of an eye, with the ball at his feet. Bobby
Robson, one of the first European coaches to work with Ronaldo after
his arrival as a teenager from Brazil, said Ronaldo reminded him of a
thoroughbred colt. Asked once whether Alan Shearer was as good as
Ronaldo, Robson politely replied, 'Shearer is a fantastic player but
Ronaldo is six years younger and he can score goals that Shearer can't.
He's the best player in the world and arguably the best player of all.
But he will be the best, without a shadow of a doubt. When he's 22, 23,
24, 25, 26 - Wow! Wow!'

Robson's words have acquired a special poignancy with time, because it
is just those years, between 22 and 25, that Ronaldo has lost to injury
(he was 26 last month). But in footballing terms he is far from old and
this World Cup would be the ideal place to remind the world of his
sublime qualities. For both him and his team it promises to be an
interesting tournament.

The Brazilian, who harbours not the slightest of doubts that he will be
fit, acknowledges that for the first time in more than 40 years, his
country are not included by most pundits among the favourites to win.
But there is a glint in his eye, a note of quiet, confident defiance,
as he calmly sets out why he thinks the pundits are wrong. 'I think
Brazil can do very well in this World Cup precisely because Brazil are
not arriving as favourites,' he says. 'This can be a very positive
aspect for us. Because before, and especially last time, we would
arrive at the World Cup under an awful lot of pressure, but now there's
a sense that if we lose, well, we lose.'

There is a detectably deliberate humility, bordering on the downright
deceitful, in the way he talks that strikes one as alarmingly ominous.
After all, Brazil begin in perhaps the easiest group and after what
should be straightforward wins over Turkey, China and Costa Rica you
sense that a head of steam may be established and that suddenly the
punditocracy might suffer a terrible come-uppance..

'The truth is,' he says, 'that we do have a good team. I prefer not to
talk too much about us, though. Still, we're going to the World Cup,
and we're going to work incredibly hard to get to the final and win.'

Surely, though, the pressure on Brazil remains as intense as ever back
home? 'Yes, that's true. There is a lot of pressure in Brazil itself.
But in Europe, where most of the Brazilian players play, people speak
very little of Brazil. And that suits me just fine.'

All the same, their dismal qualifying performances suggest that the
team is still well short of being the sum of its highly talented parts.
Ronaldo has an answer to that one, too. 'That's because the football
calendar is really complicated for us. There are times when you can
call up players who play in Europe; there are times when you can't. But
yes, it's true. The coach has a very hard time trying to put together a
team, the base of a team.'

Who are your favourites, Brazil apart, to win the World Cup? 'France,
Argentina, England and Italy are the teams,' he says, without
hesitation.

'France have been playing really well for some years now and they've
got virtually the same players. Argentina, the same. They are playing
consistently well and they have great players who play here in Europe.
Italy: they now have a very strong team. Before they were lacking up
front but now they have three, four very strong attacking players, as
well as very strong defenders, strong midfielders. They have a great
team. And England, a strong team. I hope Beckham recovers in time
because he is an important player for them and he can contribute a lot
to the World Cup as a whole.'

Does he genuinely believe that England are serious candidates, or is he
saying it out of politeness because he is talking to a British sports
magazine? 'No, no,' he replies, looking mildly offended. 'England have
shown in recent games that they have a very serious team. I mean, they
won 5-1 away against Germany...!'

As for Beckham, when asked about his qualities the first thing Ronaldo
replies is not that he has a velvet right foot. He says much the same
thing that Diego Simeone told me recently. The Argentine's words were,
'Beckham has a great vision of the game.' Ronaldo's first comment was,
'He is a very intelligent player.' And then he added, 'He strikes the
ball well. He has a very strong, very powerful, very precise shot.'

Did he see the goal he scored against Deportivo la Coru¿a? 'I saw it,'
he replied, quickly, almost reverently. Incredible, wasn't it?
'Incredible! And he made it look easy. There are few players in the
world with that quality. Roberto Carlos has it. Beckham has it. But,
well, there are other England players with other strong qualities too.'

Owen? Maradona said he was the best thing to emerge from the last World
Cup. 'Yes, Owen. A great player. Very, very good. What he did in the
last World Cup he can do again because now he has more experience.'

How would he feel playing against the likes of Michael Owen week after
week? Would he be able to adapt to the English game? He seemed
surprised by the question.

'I don't think I would have any problem at all playing in England,' he
replied. 'I'd love it.'

You'd love it?

'I would.'

As for the teams he would want to play for, he gives a predictable
answer, although not necessarily in the order you might expect.
'Arsenal,' he said. 'I like Arsenal a lot. And Manchester United. Those
are two that I like.'

Asked whether he is sure he wants to play in England, he reiterates his
view, but with a caveat. 'It appeals to me, certainly, because it's a
championship that has improved a lot. Now there are a lot of great
players there. But I'm very tied to Inter, so I must be clear that I
would only leave if there were some serious problem here. If not, I
stay, because I'm very well here.'

Of course, were there to be a problem at Inter then he is sure to have
suitors from across Europe, notably Spain. How does football there
compare with what he knows in Italy? 'In Spain the game's a lot more
open. They score a lot more goals. They play football more. Here in
Italy they are much more concerned with tactics and strategy, and
sometime we don't play football.'

You don't play football? So what do you play, chess? 'Something like
chess, yes,' he said, chuckling lightly.

Not very good chess, it would seem, given the woeful performances of
Italian clubs in Europe of late. How did he explain that?

'Well, the Italian championship remains very strong. And the players,
all of us, including those who don't play here, who play in Spain or
England, we all know that the Italian championship is the strongest
one. I'm not saying it's the most spectacular. I do believe that the
Spanish league is more spectacular. But it's not as competitive as the
Italian one.'

But how can he say that when the Spanish teams, even the likes of his
former team Barcelona who have been struggling at home, have been so
superior in competitions in which Italian teams have competed? Isn't he
contradicting himself?

'No, it's different. Because sometimes Italian teams prefer the Italian
championship. Not that European competition is not important, but
sometimes they prefer the scudetto. Yet I do believe that the teams of
other countries, especially England and Spain, have improved an awful
lot. I don't believe it is simply that the Italian standard has
declined. Rather it's that the other countries have got better.'

The clock is winding down. The Inter president Massimo Moratti is
hovering around, looking as if he too might crave an audience. Time for
one final question. Now that he looks as if he has finally recovered,
what is his biggest remaining ambition?

He answers with stunning - with heartfelt - simplicity, without the
slightest hesitation or doubt. 'To stay healthy,' he says, beginning
his answer before I have finished my question. 'If I can stay healthy
all the rest... all the rest I can achieve.'


http://observer.guardian.co.uk/osm/story/0,6903,716790,00.html