The Brazilian scored all three goals in Barcelona’s 3-2 victory. Ronaldo outpaces Valencia’s Gaizka Mendieta in September 1996. Ronaldo, on the other hand, was a hyperreal animation of rubber, iron and heat, the Ready Brek kid on fast forward, and though he too enjoyed the beautiful game with a smile on his face, it wasn’t an act of philosophy or ideology, it was because it was the best way to kill you and your death was amusing to him. The Brazilian greats of the past – Garrincha, Didi, Pelé, Zico – were cuddly little guys who played samba football.
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But what if he did that to a cyborg programmed with discombobulating skill, speed, power, mentality and intelligence, in order to become the acme, apogee, epitome, apotheosis and quintessence of everything a centre-forward should be? If, as David Foster Wallace wrote, watching Roger Federer was a religious experience, watching Ronaldo was a paranormal one: Federer explored the full range of human capability to reinvent our conception of the possible, whereas Ronaldo performed feats way beyond the limits of corporeality to reinvent our conception of the impossible, an emissary sent from far into the future to show us that everything we thought previously was a lie. The book of Genesis tells us that God blew into Adam’s nostrils with the breath of life and man became a living being. He could play.Įl Fenomeno 20 sene önce Compostela'ya attığı onunla özdeşleşen bu meşhur golü hatırlıyor musun? /HaKfOSyM6V- FC Barcelona October 12, 2016 But that was not the first time I’d seen him, and though I can’t place the game, I can place the feeling – the shock and awe and joy and fear and laughter and love – because it’s still in me now. My first specific memory of Ronaldo is his famous goal for Barcelona against Compostela in October 1996. But though Ronaldo rocked a similarly send-uppable feature, his talent was so extreme and so consuming that only Ó Fenómeno would do anything but Ó Fenómeno would’ve been ridiculous. Dunga means Dopey, after the dwarf blonde-haired, blue-eyed Ricardo Rogério de Brit is known as Alemão, German and Gabriel Gonzaga, the MMA fighter, answers to Napão, Big Nose. Brazilians are famous for their nicknames, part of a culture that – pre-Bolsonaro – made their country the funnest in the world. Within two years, Ronaldo was installed as a common room hero, his alias arousing particular interest. Ronaldo is second right in the front row, wearing Pierluigi Casiraghi’s shirt. Barry Davies marked our card during BBC’s coverage of the final, but he didn’t get on the pitch and the show, such as it was, was stolen by a different youngster, Viola lighting up the drabbest of matches before pulling a Josimar and vanishing without trace.īrazil celebrate winning their fourth World Cup after beating Italy on penalties in 1994. Like lots of people, I’d first clapped eyes on him in 1994 – Ronaldinho, as he was known then, was a member of Brazil’s victorious World Cup squad. Within weeks I was skiving triple history on a Monday afternoon to broaden my horizons with Revista De La Liga – Sol! Soool! Sol Sol! Sooooooooool!– and it was here that I got to know Ronaldo Luís Nazário de Lima. So in the summer of 1996, my parents – who’d spent a decade resisting my pleas to get Teletext – signed up to Sky, sagely rationalising that beaming industrial quantities of sport into our front room would inspire me to take school more seriously. You can probably see how I became a sportswriter.Īround then, I was also spending most weekday evenings hanging about parks, alleyways and pubs to state-alter in one way or another, often under the guise of watching a game. Growing up as a football obsessive, by the time I was 17 I thought I’d seen pretty much everything the game had to offer me.