Photo: © Personal archive of Cristiano Ronaldo
Cristiano found an original way to get around Messi.
Perhaps this is the first time in the history of football when, in the eyes of the whole world, a player ended his career twice – with an interval of a month. He first “left” when a controversial interview with Piers Morgan was published. “This is the end of Cristiano’s career,” Earth printed. But then he announced that he was moving to a club from Saudi Arabia. “Looks like his career is over,” said the blue planet on the same blue eye. Yes, again.
So is he everything? Or still in the game?
Kings Can Do Anything
Cristiano himself briefly said that he had won everything in Europe. For these words, of course, he will be ridiculed: what about the Albanian Cup? And the title of the top scorer of the Faroe Islands? Snobs with sharp tongues will never be satisfied. People who have a football player who does not play in Europe retired will probably say that Pele never started it: from Santos to Cosmos, and then to Cosmos.
For this eastern maneuver, fate singled out the worst possible moment for Cristiano. How to make yourself known in the days when the eldest of the kings of football has gone to eternity, the competing king has become the world champion, and in the final the future king has shown himself to be promising? How to claim your rights in this battle of kings for the world’s attention?
In an interview where he showed disrespect to the Manchester United manager, Cristiano definitely broke something. He dealt a crushing blow to the rules and traditions, put himself outside the law – unwritten. Many will never come to terms with this, but if you try to look at it without emotions, then setting yourself outside the law can be setting yourself above the law. This is quite autocratic: kings can do everything.
Cristiano, even at 37 years old, could not afford to turn into a football commoner. To become a kind of museum, a former legend who sits on the bench during matches with a blissful smile. This is what has already happened to him both at the club and, as the World Cup showed, in the national team. And to agree to live out his life in Europe as a retired star would just mean – “finish a career.”
Messi’s new challenge
And he came up with a new campaign of conquest – there, I don’t know where. For fabulous money, but money can no longer serve as fuel for his movement. Besides, what kind of money does a super-rich person need to survive the ridicule of half of the Western world about the fact that he went to the East solely for money? No, leave the money alone.
Cristiano Ronaldo accepts Messi’s challenge. Even if Messi is not aware that this challenge was thrown: the Argentinean came to the East to become a world champion, try on an aristocratic bisht cape embroidered with gold threads, and went home.
The Portuguese decides that he will stay in the East. In this rich and mysterious part of the world, there is still a lot of unconquered, undiscovered, unsolved. Staying is harder than slipping in and leaving. The Eastern world has just idolized and honored Messi. Now, Cristiano faces a difficult task: to win back these “subjects” from Messi, to switch their attention to himself, to make himself fall in love. And this, as another eastern hero Timur (Tamerlane) Zhuravel would say, is a “challenge”.
But for Cristiano, it’s not enough just to become a hero and a symbol in football Saudi Arabia, a country of 40 million covered by a football boom (Grzegorz Krychowiak, who plays there, spoke about this before the World Cup): he intends to be not just the king of the football East, but also a football symbol in the eyes women of the whole world. And this is an unexpected and daring throw in a new dimension for the usual two-dimensional scale of football success. Someone has been fighting all his life for men’s cups of gold and crystal, and Cristiano set his sights on conquering living women’s hearts.
The world of men was often hostile to him – this, perhaps, is mutual. He was angry and mocking at him. And women accepted everything and were faithful to Cristiano in love. His main protectors are actually protectors, because they are his sisters and mother. Their warm and loving words accompany his every step in life.
It was time for Cristiano to understand that the world of women for him is immense and inexhaustible in its riches. He stated that by his speeches in the Arab East he intends to fight for the rights of women. He definitely wants to become for the beautiful half a symbol of football and a model of a football player. Cristiano’s career is built on the visual image of a perfect athlete, an impeccable athlete. He is flamboyant and has always strived for attractiveness. And his potential ladies’ kingdom lays claim to billions of hearts and eyes.
