There is no better footballer than Cristiano Ronaldo. Says Cristiano Ronaldo. Maybe he’s right. But he obviously lacks something very crucial.
Cristiano Ronaldo dos Santos Aveiro is undisputedly one of the best footballers in the planet. A goal machine, an efficiency robot called “CR7”. Master, European champion, permanent champion. Even at the age of 40 a flagship athlete. “Widely Regarded As One of the Greatest Players of All Time”, it is even in his Wikipedia entry. “One of the best players of all time”.
But is that really true? Doubts are appropriate. Even if the Cristiano-Ronaldo fans don’t want to hear that.
Because as reliable as he shoots goals and pulverizes records-although at best in the internationally second-class Saudi League-we can rely on the fact that it will not take long before “CR7” struts again in Pfauenmanier across the square and as many people as possible in the football cosmos would like to have their own greatness participated.
He has just demonstrated this again, just in time for his 40th birthday, Cristiano Ronaldo underlined his exception again. “I think I’m the most complete player who has ever existed. It may ultimately be a question of personal preference, but I don’t see anyone who is better than me,” said the all-rounder in the Spanish football show “El Chiringuito” . “I’m strong in the header, I shoot direct free kicks, I meet with both feet, I’m fast, I’m strong and I jump up.”
He was the most complete player of all time, he concluded completely and pushed a few superlatives afterwards. “If I score 920, 925 or 930 goals at the end, I don’t care. I am the best in the story. Point”.
If you wanted to rode around now, you would have to state with all admiration that the penetrating self -glorification of this fabulous footballer gets your nerves quite nerves. Then one would have to say that the absolutist self -image of “CR7”, the furor of his self -felt grandiosity, is roughly comparable to that of Elon Musk or Donald Trump. Humility is really not the matter of these heroes.
Was that different? Perhaps. The veil of the nostalgia sometimes mercilessly lies over the memory. But we take Diego Armando Maradona. When asked who he considers to be the best footballer, he always answered differently: sometimes it was Alfredo di Stéfano, sometimes Pelé, another time Lothar Matthäus. He only did not name himself. There are hardly anyone among those who saw Maradona playing, who does not think the 1.65 meter little ball magician.
Let’s take Muhammad Ali. No footballer, but “The Greatest”, the greatest, he gave himself the slightest doubt. His virtue was not modest, at least not in public. It was different privately, Ali did not work with his skills. He had only understood early on that the large flap belongs to the staging like the provocative dance in the ring. An ironic armor that protected from unpleasant opponents and the unbill in the world.
At Cristiano Ronaldo it is feared that his arrogance is real. There are signs. His swell, if he has to go to the exchange bench, his tirades towards referees and players, if they don’t do the way he wants, or his malicious comments towards Lionel Messi, when he has won the golden ball again. And not Cristiano Ronaldo. The best. Point.
If football was only about who scores with which part of the body and how many goals, the Portuguese would certainly be a very big one. But football is more than statistics and priest lists. Football is dreaming, suffering and also a little melancholy and modesty.