Ronaldo Nazario and Víctor (Photo: Cordon Press)
There was a time when I liked football. As only fans and children can understand, if my team lost an important game I lost my desire to have dinner. That’s how unconscious he was. Those were other times, a time in which the newspaper Brand did not hesitate to put Barcelona’s star striker on the cover of its national edition, in a way that is inconceivable today, and proclaimed him the reincarnation of Skin when the only possible scale did not have Leo Messi as a unit of measurement.
That boy’s name was Ronaldo Luís Nazário de Lima, you may remember it. In that football, where Ronaldo seemed to combine the power of the best Cristiano Ronaldo and Messi’s control in the race was simply King.
Ronaldo landed in a Barcelona Football Club that was trying to straighten the course after a blank year, in full demolition to the foundations of the self-proclaimed Dream Team. The hangover from the first European Cup in 1992 lasted for a few seasons due to institutional complacency that did not launch a proper squad renewal.
Meanwhile, the famous around He focused his attention on more important things: one of the great dramas that Barcelona fans were barely overcoming, probably resulting in several dozen suicides prudently silenced by the press to avoid a contagion effect and mass immolations in all the Barcelona fans’ clubs, was accept some white stripes! on the sleeves, imposed by the brand that equipped him.
Well, imagine the panorama: without winning prestigious titles, a rarefied atmosphere, general discouragement, recurring nightmares starring John Gaspart bathing in his underwear in the Thames, etc. In this climate it is easy to understand that an expensive signing of a promising nineteen-year-old Brazilian striker, with his paddles perhaps too far apart, would hardly inspire optimism in the culés.
Ronaldo’s sleeve cut in a match against Atlético de Madrid (Photo: Cordon Press)
But a sensational dribble and a goal in the Super Cup against Atlético de Madrid raised the first eyebrows, which did not lower for months and left foreheads on which highly cured cheese could be grated. It is possible that Juan Palomo’s play against Compostela is the most remembered of that season.
It seemed that the sports brand that sponsored him had everything orchestrated to launch a global campaign with that schoolyard goal in which it seemed impossible to stop it: kicks, grabs, grim looks, pushes… any of the pushes he endured on the way to the goal would have ended with 90% of the star players in today’s league doing the croquette on the ground between screams of primal pain in response to which only the epidural can be offered or, in extreme cases, a couple of shots out of compassion to finish them off. the suffering.
Ronaldo and Santi Denia (Photo: Cordon Press)
But for me, Ronaldo’s highlight was the game against Valencia a couple of weeks later, on October 26, 1996. And specifically his third goal (the little angel cracked a hat-trick). It was another example, at first unlikely in professional football, of a school bully’s goal: for anyone it was just another ball divided by midfield and boredom, but Ronaldo saw it as a tame ball in the six-yard box with the goalkeeper agonizing in the corner flag. And he started running.
The shortest path in that Ronaldo geometry seemed to obey a clothoid: it started from a straight line significantly oblique to the goal and gradually turned, obeying laws of quantum gravity not yet discovered, until facing the goalkeeper.
Depending on the camera’s framing, its path seemed to cross the defenders who came into its path, calling into question the impenetrability of the material, while from other angles it was seen that it crossed between the four defenders at the last moment through a minimal gap, as if he were Indiana Jones rescuing his hat from a deadly hatch.
That kind of thing had never been seen with such regularity on a football field. really. The closest thing to that Ronaldo was Mark Lendersa character from the animated series Champions. In the early nineties, private television channels began to broadcast in Spain. Well, who says Spain means in certain cities.
Those of us who lived in the provinces read, without believing, spectacular praise in the written media related to the new channels, since apparently these brought weaning and innovation in equal parts, that is, mamachichos y Twin Peaks. And also, a cartoon series that took away audience from the nightly news programs: Championspopularly known as Oliver y Benjiand that is already part of the collective imagination.
For example, the gigantic swing of Heidi and the soccer fields of Champions have become two classic problems in physics and geometry. The protagonists of the series, Oliver and Benji, a couple of porridgethey became invisible as soon as the temperamental Lenders appeared on the scene, who stole all their plans.
As another feature of his marginal profile, Lenders rolled up his sleeves because the character designers would assume that otherwise he would keep a packet of Ducats in them. His way of playing was a true reflection of his personality: he surpassed the entire rival team with speed and power, overwhelming the unwary who blocked his path.
Like Ronaldo. And no matter how hard you try Jorge Valdanothe only cartoon player was Ronaldo. Romario He was something else: a soccer player, who lived permanently four time zones away, with the performance of a Jamaican sprinter in the vicinity of the area and a Kenyan long-distance runner in the trendy nightclubs.
Mark Lenders at full capacity. Image: Toei Doga
There are some studies of dubious validity that relate the activity of brain areas during sex and football, and in which hot colors coincide like a carbon copy. It is clear that the reaction of the Barcelona bench to that goal should illustrate a treatise on human sexuality, specifically the chapter on common behaviors of first-timers after orgasm: Bobby Robson putting a hand to his head and sighing, Mourinho throwing his fist in the air in anger as a sign of victory and the substitutes wearing the typical post-coital blush on their faces, halfway between excited tears and silly laughter, trying to assimilate what had just happened.
As a terrible contrast, the painting that formed the Valencia bench could have been titled “Still life and Luis Aragones». The coach’s teeth were on the verge of being thrown out several times amidst spitting and swearing from that mouth that, more like a slurry sprinkler than an essential element for communication, fertilized with organic fertilizer the roots of the family tree of the defensive line of he.
Once the review of the saints was finished, upon their return from the band, the substitutes and the rest of the technical team held their breath, tried to act like a chameleon or disappear into a bush like Homer Simpson, and kept their eyes forward to avoid crossing paths with them. Aragonese and end up turned into stone. With all that he had sinned in word, deed and omission in the brief journey from lime to bench, Aragonés could have been excommunicated from all the monotheistic religions founded since the dawn of time.
The stands, as could not be otherwise, were filled with handkerchiefs. At that time, fabulous goals or outstanding performances were rewarded by chanting the name and with a bullfighting scarf. Now, in another of those absurd changes, the fans move their arms as if they were holding a rag, fanning a fainted person; and they only need to ask Marcial to bring the salts. In my house, traditionally culé, we celebrate the goal like the Bourbons do in the last week of the Olympic Games.
Ronaldo and 1996 (Photo: Cordon Press)
How to define that. There were no words. Maybe that’s why the only one who would be able to describe it in Spanish without speaking Spanish was Robson. Sir Bobby Robson’s stay in Spain had (apart from winning all the competitions he played in except the league, in which he finished second by two points) great moments of glory. The first, without a doubt, stealing a kiss on the mouth from Carmen Sevillain what was a funny anecdote at the time and that today would be a scandalous micro-machismo (I insist: those were different times).
The most common occurred in lively press conferences in which interventions in English, Spanish, notes from Mou (who was his assistant and occasional translator) and explicit gestural language were skipped. For example, his opinion of Ronaldo’s third goal could have been this: “Ronaldo? Buf… Chas-chas, fantastic! », At the same time he would zigzag with his hand to reinforce his opinion.
Photo: Corbis
Maybe football stopped exciting me when Ronaldo went to Italy and lost his knees like someone who loses his suitcases in an airport. There were also some confusing metabolic changes that transformed that cheetah into a bison that alternated legendary goals with epic birthdays.
Coincident or not, my passion for football evolved in inverse proportion to the number of injuries and interest in industrial pastries. I remember that the following season I missed the first Barça-Madrid of my conscious life because I had an appointment. On the bus back, listening without interest to the broadcast on the radio, I realized that I had stopped liking football or I didn’t like it enough not only to lose my appetite, but not even to watch the game of the century that year. semester.
However, I never cease to marvel when every so often I see the video of that twenty-year-old boy galloping down the field and miraculously emerging between four defenders to put the ball into the net.
2023-12-22 05:51:25
#Ronaldo #dressed #Mark #Lenders
