18. CLOSE ENCOUNTERS: MESSI VS RONALDO
In July 2007, Ronaldo was joined at Manchester United by another young Portuguese star from Sporting Lisbon, the winger Luís Carlos Almeida de Cunha, otherwise known as Nani, in a €25 million transfer deal. The son of poor immigrants from the Cape Verde islands, Nani spent his childhood living in one of Lisbon’s shanty neighbourhoods before being scouted by Sporting’s youth academy aged sixteen while playing for local club Massama.
When Manchester United were negotiating his transfer, assistant manager Carlos Queiroz – who had come straight back to the club in 2004 after his brief stint at Real in 2004 – travelled to Lisbon to seek reassurances from Aurélio Pereira, the director of the youth academy, that the player had the character to adapt to a new life in northern England. He wanted to know about Nani’s mentality, and if he could handle the pressure of playing for United.
‘He didn’t want to know if he had good feet. He knew all about that. He wanted to know about his personality, how he could cope with a different country and a different team,’ Pereira later recalled. ‘It was a big responsibility for Carlos Queiroz because it was a €25 million deal and he wanted to be absolutely sure. I calmed him and said that, yes, he was buying a complete player.’
United, of course, had the perfect mentor for Nani, and Cristiano Ronaldo played a not insignificant role in helping his compatriot settle down as best he could in his early days in Manchester, sharing his house with him for a while. The role of protector drew the Madeiran further out of himself. Nani struggled to communicate with other, English-speaking Manchester United players, but found solace and empathy in the company and advice offered by his more experienced Portuguese teammate Ronaldo – a Madeiran with Cape Verdean ancestry who had experienced a rough childhood of his own and had learnt the rules for survival in a foreign land.
‘There was a phase when I was living at Cristiano’s house and it was very good. There were always cheerful people and we had everything – swimming pool, Jacuzzi, tennis, ping pong,’ Nani recalled in an interview with the Daily Mail’s Chris Wheeler.1
Only later did Nani struggle to cope with solitude, when he moved to a house of his own. He would also find it hard to win over fans, and win a place in the team, ironically due to the sensational form of Ronaldo.
The rise of the Madeiran’s star accelerated in the 2007–8 season, with an important factor in his success being the part played by the Manchester United coach René Meulensteen in one-to-one training. It was the Dutchman who stayed behind to work with Ronaldo early in the season, when he was suspended for three games after being sent off against Portsmouth. He taught him to be less predictable, improve his teamwork while, at the same time, to better exploit goal-scoring opportunities rather than squander them with excessive showmanship, as Meulensteen later recalled in an interview with the Telegraph’s Henry Winter:
‘I knew what Ronaldo wanted. He wanted to be the best player in the world. I told him: “I can help you with that. There’s nothing wrong with your work ethic, it’s a wave pushing you forward.”’2 Meulensteen described drawing a diagram for Ronaldo, separating out the tactical, including awareness, understanding and decision-making, and the physical, of which Ronaldo was especially endowed, including pace, strength, stamina and agility. There was also a section for personality, which included mentality and attitude. Finally there was the technical: passing, shooting, turns and other skill moves. He asked Ronaldo what his strongest section was and he replied ‘skills’. Meulensteen then advised him to work on his one-touch and two-touch play in order to make him a more unpredictable player who opposition players would find it harder to defend against. Meulensteen addressed another issue. ‘I told him: “The problem is also your attitude and therefore your decision-making. At the moment you’re playing to put yourself into the limelight, to say look at me, how good I am. Therefore, Mr Ronaldo, you are doing a lot that doesn’t mean anything for your teammates.” He accepted this. I said: “You need to score more goals. Targets, aims.”’3
The pair worked intensively together, studying videos of Alan Shearer and Thierry Henry to improve his output ever further. Meulensteen defined three action zones for Ronaldo to focus on – No. 1: in front of goal, No. 2: either side, No. 3: outside the area. Ronaldo became deadly in all three.
When Meulensteen asked Ronaldo how many goals he thought he could score in 2007–8, the Portuguese boldly said between thirty and thirty-five. ‘I think you can score forty,’ said Meulensteen.
That season was to see Ronaldo complete one of the most remarkable periods of high performance the English game has ever seen. And again, it began in adversity, when in the second game of the season against Portsmouth, Ronaldo was sent off for an attempted head-butt. He was fined by the club after being banned for three games. If there were worries that he might sulk or feel hard done by, his return to the team showed the opposite to be true. The ‘wee show-off’, as Ferguson had once characterized him, found a performance level to rival anything seen before or since, scoring thirty-one goals in thirty-four League appearances and another eleven in the cups and European competitions. In the first European game of the season, United were drawn against Sporting Lisbon, a game that could have led to a similar performance as the one against Benfica, which had drawn the hairdryer treatment from Ferguson. Instead it drew a performance of focus and discipline. Ronaldo scored a low dipping header, declining to celebrate, and United went on to win the game.
Over the next forty-odd games, he scored every type of goal. From the leaping headers that were becoming his trademark – one particular goal against Roma typifies this, as he seems to hang in mid-air for several seconds, several feet above the Roma players, before the ball rockets into the net past a despairing keeper – to tap-ins, long-range screamers and Exocet free kicks, including one against Newcastle that looked as if it had been fired from a cannon. Afterwards he turned to the crowd and almost seemed to shrug, with a look on his face that said ‘not bad’. The bravado and showmanship was still there, but it was finally being backed up by awe-inspiring performances. Looking back at those goals now, it’s amazing how often that change of direction, the Cruyff turn or step-over inside the flailing defender, was followed by the ball bending into the top or bottom corner. Defenders seemed to bounce off him; he had an extra yard of pace and vastly more mental acuity. The ball always seemed to be breaking into his path, or popping up at the far post as he arrived. There was a national debate over what the secret to his free kicks was and whether they were possible to stop. It was the quality of his interplay with Carlos Tévez and Wayne Rooney that drew most admiration, as it felt for the first time he was playing as an integral part of a team.
For Ronaldo and his team, it felt like the right time to assess the whereabouts of brand CR7. Four years after arriving at Manchester United, Ronaldo agreed to the publication of a ghost-written memoir entitled Moments. It was heavily illustrated, with photographs of him off the field outnumbering those of him as a player, and dominated by publicity shots, with the text admitting to a ‘fondness for advertising’. It seemed aimed at confirming the player’s celebrity status, while underlining his huge marketing potential.
Cristiano had shown himself to be a natural in front of the cameras, like Beckham, ever since his profile had rocketed during Euro 2004, although he claimed to have had to learn the trade. The first advertising contract he signed after his arrival in Manchester was with the Portuguese financial group BES. It had him kicking a ball several times and seeing it swerve away each time, until he finally scores and brings the net down – an image of ultimate success born from hard work and practice.
His first modelling experience was with the London trademark Pepe Jeans. ‘It was totally different from everything I had done until then in advertising. I saw it as another personal challenge, because I had to pose side by side with a professional model, who was used to the cameras, unlike me,’ he wrote, modestly.4
The Pepe Jeans ad showed him against a backdrop of an industrial wasteland in Barreiro near Lisbon, lounging, torso exposed, on an inflatable armchair, alongside a young woman reclining on the ground in high heels and black bikini, both in a pose suggestive of post-coital relaxation and yet strangely disengaged from each other’s presence, as if they formed part of a collage. Other publicity shots that made their way into Moments focused on him as a sporting Adonis, his good looks and physique often displayed, with him dressed only in briefs or tight swimming trunks, seemingly at ease with a sexualized posing that would appeal as much to gay men as straight women.
Advised and encouraged by Jorge Mendes’s now multinational agency, he willingly took on advertising assignments and relished the experience. Drawing on the marketing example of Beckham, he sold a range of commodities, from fashionable clothes to non-alcoholic drinks, all the while reminding us of his self-deprecating sense of humour, his athleticism and skill as a sportsman, and the trophies won at United.
Despite carrying an ankle injury as the season drew to a close, Ronaldo would also do something that would come to accrue massive symbolic significance: play in a game against Lionel Messi.
On 23 April 2008, the twenty-three-year-old Madeiran went head to head with the twenty-year-old Argentine for the first time during the first leg of a Champions League semi-final at the Nou Camp.
This was the fifth competitive encounter between the two clubs in modern football history, with the expectation of it being a classic, as memorable and full of drama as the first tie played in March 1984, when Ron Atkinson’s United, captained by Bryan Robson, faced a Barça coached by 1978 Word Cup Winner César Menotti, and with a young Diego Maradona in its illustrious ranks.
The latest encounter had United and Barça fielding Ronaldo and Messi, two of the most exciting players to have emerged in a generation, and contenders for their first Ballon d’Or as Players of the Year, after finishing second and third in the 2007 voting. Each had already marked themselves as important entries in the histories of their clubs, both as play makers and goal scorers. Ronaldo was already seen by many of his own countrymen as the best Portuguese player since Eusébio, while at Barcelona Messi was seen as the ‘new Maradona’, who would finally live up to the billing, and had been dubbed ‘Messiah’ by the press.
In the run-up to the game, each player commanded respect if not fear from the opponent, because of the speed, resilience, vision and skill on and off the ball that they had shown in recent seasons. If there was a difference, it was one of context: Barça were approaching the game on the back foot after going through two seasons without silverware, while Manchester United were on a roll, heading towards their second successive Premier League title and hoping to clinch the Champions League, nine years after last winning the European crown.
But the focus of millions of Spanish-and English-speaking fans that evening was on Ronaldo and Messi. While the rivalry would not assume its most epic proportions until both players played in La Liga, the prospect of watching the two most exciting players of their generation in their first physical encounter was thrilling.
From the moment they stepped out on to the Nou Camp turf, in the middle of their team lines, the TV cameras quickly picked out the two opposing players. The contrast in their physiques was striking – Messi, small and ragged, with his shoulder-length hair topped by a somewhat unfashionable headband, still looking as if he had dropped in from a youth kickabout in his native Rosario, and with no interest other than going out and getting stuck into the game. In the other line, Ronaldo: tall, lean and bronzed, every bit the celebrity sportsman, evidently basking in the glow of the cameras and the stadium lights. Before them, one side of the stadium displayed a massive mosaic with the blue and claret Barça colours.
The fans’ famous mosaics had their origins in a game against Real Madrid on 7 March 1992, when Johan Cruyff had led out the Dream Team that would win the League and the club’s first European Cup a couple of months later. Now, sixteen years on, the hopes of most of the 95,000-plus fans inside the stadium were pinned on the young Argentine, who seemed poised to usurp the crown currently worn by Ronaldinho. The atmosphere lost none of its decibels as the home crowd belted out their battle hymn of heroic aspiration and solidarity.
The whole stadium
loudly cheers
We’re the blue and claret supporters
It matters not where we hail from
Whether it’s the south or the north
Now we all agree, we all agree,
One flag unites us in brotherhood.
Blue and claret blowing in the wind
One valiant cry
We’ve got a name that everyone knows:
Barça, Barça, Barça!
Players, Supporters
United we are strong.
We’ve achieved much over the years,
And we have shown, we have shown,
That no one can ever break us.
Blue and claret blowing in the wind
One valiant cry
We’ve got a name that everyone knows:
Barça, Barça, Barça!
The match got off to a dramatic start, with Ronaldo at the centre of it. Two minutes into the game, his goalwards header was handled by Messi’s compatriot, Barça’s Argentine defender Gabriel Milito, and a clear penalty awarded. Ronaldo unhesitatingly stepped up to the spot, only to thrash his kick wide of the goalkeeper’s left-hand post, provoking delirium among the home fans and total dejection among the United fans who occupied a small portion of the stadium.
Ronaldo barely had an impact on the rest of the game, with United finding it difficult to set up attacks, leaving him, Carlos Tévez and Wayne Rooney isolated up front. Ronaldo claimed afterwards he had been handicapped by being played as a striker rather than on the wing – when Barcelona dominated possession for long periods it reduced his ability to get involved and play a more decisive role.
Among the more menacing players was Messi, but it was a game of missed chances for him too, with his only shot at goal blocked before he was substituted halfway through the second half of the 0–0 draw. The first meeting of the two future greats was, then, something of a damp squib.
Fourteen minutes into the second leg at Old Trafford, the only goal of the tie came not from Ronaldo or Messi, but from a spectacular twenty-five-yard strike by veteran Paul Scholes, which secured Manchester United’s progress to their first Champions League final since 1999.The victory had added poignancy and significance for the club, coming on the fiftieth anniversary of the Munich air disaster. But the tie also marked an inauspicious first Champions League encounter between Ronaldo and Messi, over the two legs.
Ronaldo was not on his best form at Old Trafford either. By contrast, Messi was the real danger man for Barcelona, pinning United back with his slalom runs at goal. Messi was frustrated by the resilient defence of a team normally noted for its attacking verve, but even in defeat emerged as the man of the match. It was indicative of the shifting balance of power and mood in Barcelona ranks, Messi as the bright spot amid a season of overall disappointment.
For Ronaldo, the tie was a rare personal blip in a spectacularly successful season and calendar year. He went on to score the defining goal that secured Manchester United the League on the final day of the season against Wigan, making up for that miss in Barcelona. It was his thirty-first goal of the League campaign, enough to make him the first winger to win the European Golden Shoe. Gary Neville later recalled in his memoir that he felt he owed Ronaldo his championship medal in a way he had only done previously with Peter Schmeichel and Eric Cantona in 1995–6.
The season ended on an even higher note, with Ronaldo making his mark in United’s victory in the Champions League final in Moscow. Ronaldo scored the first goal, another of his gravity-defying leaps above an awestruck Chelsea back line. It was his forty-second goal of the season in all competitions – exceeding his own pre-season expectations, but matching those of René Meulensteen.
After Chelsea’s Frank Lampard equalized on the stroke of halftime, the match went to a penalty shootout. Ronaldo had his kick saved by Petr Čech, who wasn’t fooled by Ronaldo’s stuttering run and attempts at mind games. The game ended in sudden death, when Nicolas Anelka’s penalty was palmed away by Edwin van der Sar. United were kings of Europe again, and Ronaldo had his first trophy for being the Champions League’s top scorer. The enduring image of the celebrations that rainswept night is of Gary Neville, elder statesman of the United team, who didn’t feature, with his arm round Ronaldo, punching the air. Ronaldo is in tears, overcome by the occasion, the relief that his missed penalty did not lose United the game, and the realization that at twenty-three he has won the biggest competition in club football.
However, almost as soon as he was off the pitch, the rumours started that Real Madrid were going to sign him. It was to be a transfer battle that would threaten to overshadow his Euro 2008, in the same way Messi’s summer would be hijacked by his appearance at the Olympics. But first, Leo had to limp his way there.