Cristiano Ronaldo, ageless, defies the odds when the goal record closes

Cristiano Ronaldo tells us who he is through his body. It’s his personal creation, still perfect at 36: the incredibly small waist and back, the abdominal muscles of a realistic socialist statue, the jump of a basketball star, the creepy look of a band singer of music and the heart of the ultramarathoner. whose pace will hardly increase on Saturday when current champions Portugal meet Germany at Euro 2020. God turned their football rival Lionel Messi, but Ronaldo is proud to have made himself.

Odds piled up against Ronaldo when he was born on the island of Madeira, the poor suburb of the poor suburbs of Portugal. His mother had wanted to abort him, but Portuguese law did not allow it in 1985. His father, a veteran of the Angolan war, was “drunk almost every day,” Ronaldo later recalled. The unwanted child acquired the constant need to prove his right to exist, theorizes a biographer, Jan-Cees Butter.

A nostalgic teenager at the Sporting academy in Lisbon, he was mocked for his Madeira accent. At 18, his brilliance took him to England and Manchester United. A year later, Portugal lost the final of Euro 2004 against Greece, but by then it was already over.

Smart enough to analyze his game, he realized that his lone trick, stepping over, would not make him the best player in the world. Nor could he go well, face, or make free throws. He was taught these skills and, through daily repetition, memorized a repertoire of feints.

A slim sprinter, didn’t seem destined for a long run, but through obsessive workouts (he can do 142 crunches in 45 seconds), he closed the body into muscles. Even on vacation, he exercises constantly. His ice baths and his instant reflexes whenever he suspects that he is in the company of amateurs terrorize his teammates with professionalism.

He became a role model for the Portuguese generation that emigrated after the financial crisis, said Raquel Vaz-Pinto, a political scientist at the Portuguese Institute of International Relations and Security. She defined her message as, “If you have talent and ambition, if you sacrifice a lot, you will succeed.”

He rebuilt himself in 2014. Warned of chronic damage to his left knee, he became an all-terrain center forward who usually makes a single touch before shooting. He leaves the defense to teammates, the extras of his personal drama.

In the final of Euro 2016, playing for Portugal’s first major prize, he was injured after 25 minutes and then trained from the bench as if the coach did not exist. Portugal beat France in overtime and, in his speech to the national team, Ronaldo issued the trophy mainly as a personal event: “This was the prize I still lacked in my career. An award I won thanks to you ”.

He has won the Golden Ball five times for the best player in the world, compared to Messi’s six. The argument about who is better is as silly as debating whether Michelangelo surpasses Leonardo. The personal duel of the two players improved them both.

“Messi was good for Ronaldo and Ronaldo was good for Messi,” Kylian Mbappé said. The young French striker, considered the best player of the new generation, grew up with Ronaldo’s posters in his bedroom and believes it is no match for either man.

“If you tell yourself you’re going to do better than them, it’s beyond ego or determination: it’s lack of awareness. These players are incomparable.” Mbappé said in an interview with Esquire this spring.

Messi and Ronaldo belong to the cohort of modern greats who have challenged aging through improved professionalism, nutrition and health care: tennis stars Roger Federer and Serena Williams have 39, while Tom Brady goes win this year’s Super Bowl at 43 years old.

Ronaldo’s desire is not affected: every defeat is a personal insult, the failure of all teammates to provide him with a tragedy. He is equally a perfectionist off the field: he helped eliminate his brother Hugo from drugs and quietly donates to charities. Three of her four children were born to surrogate mothers, who do not participate in breeding, as if no single couple could meet their parental standards.

Still, for all of his 148 million Facebook followers, mostly humans, Ronaldo’s achievements have not made him universally loved outside of Portugal. Unfairly, the brightness on demand may seem mechanical. Opposing fans mocked him for chanting “Messi!”, While the Hungarian crowd tried homophobic abuse on Tuesday. Impressive, he scored two goals in a 3-0 victory.

At the pre-match press conference, he cleaned up indifferently billions of discount on Coca-Cola stock price pulling out two bottles of Coca-Cola placed in front of him and praising the water.

Ronaldo now has 106 goals in 176 international matches. At the helm of a Portugal team stronger than five years ago, he is approaching the international record of Ali Daei, of Iran, in 109. He does not seem to be almost finished.