How do you solve a problem like Cristiano? For so much of his career, through his dramatic surge at Manchester United and his blossoming into the greatest goalscorer in Real Madrid’s illustrious history, the answer has been to indulge him. He may be high-maintenance, but he has also been the perfect professional, his devotion to his craft unquestionable, perhaps even unmatched. Look after him, succumb to his every demand, and you will reap the rewards of his brilliance.
The problem for Real is that Cristiano Ronaldo will be 33 a week on Monday and his representatives’ latest power play — the usual leaks to favoured media outlets about his unhappiness, the inevitable and entirely unconvincing links to a “homecoming” at United — is being made from a position of relative weakness. He wants a new contract, as he does every time Lionel Messi takes the lead in the wage war that reflects their annual battle for the Ballon d’Or over the past decade, but he is 13 months into a five-year deal worth £365,000 a week net. For all the efforts to depict that sum as an insult to a player of such genius, the thought persists that it is a contract that, if anything, might overestimate just how long he has left at the very highest level.
Nobody should be writing off Ronaldo; people made that mistake a few seasons ago, noting that he was becoming less mobile, naturally enough, as he entered his 30s, only for him to reinvent himself successfully — Cristiano 3.0, as some like to call it — as the type of super-efficient penalty-box poacher that makes him so unrecognisable from his early years on the wing at United. The problem is that not even Ronaldo can defy the ageing process indefinitely.
He has scored just six times in 15 La Liga appearances this season. That five of those goals have come in the past seven matches, including two against Deportivo La Coruña last weekend, is encouraging, but anyone watching him regularly would struggle to make the case that he is as formidable as he has ever been.
He deservedly won the Ballon d’Or for 2017, but even as he helped Real win La Liga and yet another Champions League title, scoring five spectacular goals over two legs of the quarter-final against Bayern Munich, a hat-trick in the semi-final first leg against Atletico Madrid and two goals in the final against Juventus, he looked like a player striving to defy the sands of time. That he did so consistently, delivering such grand performances on the biggest occasions again and again, is testament to his many enduring powers, but not too many would share the view he expressed upon signing his latest contract that: “I think I have got ten years left.”
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Ronaldo’s glorious career to date can be divided into three distinct acts: those early years at Sporting Lisbon and United, when he had all the skills but not yet the maturity to make the most of them; the spectacular surge when he began to flourish at United from the age of 21, which earned his first Ballon d’Or and that world-record transfer to Madrid; and the reinvention as a true goalscoring machine (424 goals in 419 appearances for Real).
It remains unclear how the fourth act will unfold, but, if he is to stay at Real, it seems certain that sooner or later he will have to adjust to a less prominent role, which may be hard for one of the game’s all-time greats to accept, particularly if he is labouring under the apprehension that a contract smaller than Messi’s is an insult.
There are clear signs that Real need to freshen up their attacking options in the only way they know, which, if persistent rumours in elevated circles are to be believed, will mean a £200 million-plus bid to lure Neymar from Paris Saint-Germain (with other potential targets, such as Harry Kane, seen as fallback options). The Brazilian’s salary in Paris is greater than Ronaldo’s at Real, which indeed is reported to be part of the problem. You can be certain that Neymar would not move to Madrid for a pay cut, just as you can be certain that Ronaldo would take umbrage at playing second fiddle to a player who, whatever his undoubted quality, has won five fewer Ballons d’Or.
It all suggests a messy parting of the ways, sooner or later, but, for perhaps the first time in nearly nine years since he left, there would seem little prospect of a return to United, even if he is more serious about that possibility than when stringing them along in the past.
Another Premier League club? That looks doubtful; he was never as enamoured of English football or the English lifestyle as he likes to let on during periods of disenchantment in Spain. PSG? Possibly, but the obvious money-spinning alternative of the Chinese Super League would seem too great a comedown for a player who, even in a year or two, will surely still regard himself as the world’s greatest. Ultimately the question is whether he accepts a diminished role in Madrid or moves to a lesser stage.
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Either of those options will seem unpalatable, but it comes to every great sportsman in the end — even Cristiano Ronaldo.
Arsenal’s sudden injection of quality reeks of short-termism
Jonny Evans, Henrikh Mkhitaryan and Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang: three fine players — in fact no, one fine player and two excellent players — who would certainly bring some much-needed quality to an Arsenal squad that has looked sadly prosaic in recent seasons, more so in the light of Alexis Sánchez’s departure.
It all looks disconcertingly short-term, though; Evans is 30, Mkhitaryan is 29 and Aubemeyang, who is so heavily reliant on his fearsome pace, is 28. This is not a young Arsenal team; there are certainly some younger players who feature regularly (Calum Chambers 23, Rob Holding and Héctor Bellerín both 22, Alex Iwobi 21, Ainsley Maitland-Niles 20) and others bubbling under the surface (Konstantinos Mavropanos, Jeff Reine-Adélaïde, Joe Willock, Reiss Nelson, Chuba Akpom, Eddie Nketiah), but you would be hard pushed to characterise it as the vibrant, youthful core that has usually been at the heart of Arsène Wenger’s squads over recent times.
Evans, if he joins from West Bromwich Albion, will bring experience and composure to the defence and Aubameyang some much-needed thrust and incisiveness to the forward line if he arrives from Borussia Dortmund, but if ever a team were crying out for an injection of youthful vigour and dynamism, it is this one. Then there is the question of how you would incorporate Mesut Özil, Mkhitaryan, Alexandre Lacazette and Aubameyang in the same starting line-up. After years of complacent drift, Arsenal’s sense of urgency is welcome, but what they truly need right now is to rebuild and to invest for the medium and long term, more than the short term, which looks difficult no matter what — Carabao Cup final notwithstanding, of course. Arsenal’s troubles are always only relative.
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Don’t rush to demonise Neville
You have probably read enough by now about what a nice guy Phil Neville is and why it is wrong, based on a tweet sent in 2011 — and no, his “just battered the wife, feel better now” “joke” was not remotely funny — to be outraged by his appointment as coach of the England women’s team.
He truly is a nice guy, though, one of the very finest that anyone working in or around English football over the past two and a half decades will have come across. Whether he should have been appointed in the first place is a different debate; a personal view is that the job would ideally go to a woman every time. But, given the struggle to find suitable candidates, as described by Baroness Campbell, the FA’s head of women’s football, the willingness of a former England men’s international, who is a Uefa Pro Licence holder, to take the job and no doubt to throw himself into it with characteristic vigour, should have been seen as a good thing. It has never, after all, been regarded as one of the cushiest or most coveted jobs in English football.
If, as it appears, the longer-term plan is to mentor Casey Stoney, his assistant, to take over, once she has earned her A Licence and Pro Licence, then that too is a positive step. Questions about this unimpressive FA regime are certainly valid, but this rush to demonise Neville as a sexist pig is sad.