There was an article on FFC the other day resolving Cristiano Ronaldo of blame for his woeful performance in El Clasico recently. It made a fair point as well; you win games as a team and you lose games as a team. Ronaldo just happens to consistently be on the losing side. But it got me thinking about Ronaldo and what it means to be a truly great player. In many senses of the word Ronaldo is clearly great.
His goal tally is consistently remarkable and he would clearly get in to any team in the world, perhaps with the exception of Barcelona. He is universally feared by defenders and is the most expensive player in the history of football. Sounds as though he’s ticking all the boxes so far right? However, surely part of being one of the great footballers to go down in history you have to display a level of consistency in the biggest games.
I know it is an easy pop to have at Ronaldo to say that he doesn’t always turn up for the big games but bear with me because it is an important criticism. How can a player be truly world class or great if he has an element to his game that is missing? Surely truly world-class players are also ‘complete’ players yet Ronaldo is consistently inconsistent in big games. In fact you could even go so far as to say that he is consistently poor in big games, by big games I mean the matches against Barcelona, the cup finals. Not because he doesn’t have the talent to succeed and outshine everyone else on the pitch, perhaps it is more of a mental problem.
People always praise Ronaldo for how well he handles criticism, and for how he seems to revel in the hatred that comes his way from opposition fans. However there are signs that this isn’t true. Take, for example, his comments after the Sevilla game where he scored a hat trick.
He said: ‘that was to shut people up’, which is fine, but he then went on to say ‘not that I mind the criticism’. So which is it? That he doesn’t like criticism and the goals were to shut people up, or that he doesn’t care if people talk badly about him? It doesn’t really add up.
Personally I think that anyone as narcissistic as Ronaldo can’t take criticism. He doesn’t mind people booing him when he’s playing well but when he has played badly it’s another matter altogether. And this is where his problem lies. He is aware that because he hypes himself up so much he has to perform well in the big games. So in matches against Barcelona for Madrid, or when he was playing for Man Utd in the Champions League final against Barcelona his performances are not what you’d expect.