A clip circulated on social media after the Carabao Cup final last weekend. We won’t share it here because the fools responsible don’t need any more attention than they’ve already received, but it essentially involved some supposed Liverpool fans near the steps of Wembley’s Royal Box filming defeated Chelsea players as they played. They trudged to collect their runners-up medals and were given a series of stupid taunts.
They raised ‘the snake’ Raheem Sterling, who left his club almost a decade ago. They also politely asked about Moisés Caicedo’s mother, who was apparently a factor in his decision to move to Stamford Bridge instead of Anfield in the summer – absolutely normal behavior for an adult.
None of the players involved seemed to even raise an eyebrow in response, which was quite surprising when, given the circumstances and with family members involved in all of this, it would be understandable if they went completely Cantona.
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Actually, maybe it’s not that surprising: as a footballer you have to develop some kind of deflector shield, an impenetrable bubble around your head so that you literally don’t hear things like that, or if you do, it just falls into some dead space in your brain, without ever registering in your consciousness. There is no good in reacting: you seem mean and, in the best tradition of a father telling his daughter not to stand up to bullies, you give them more satisfaction than they deserve.
Which is a roundabout way of getting at Cristiano Ronaldo, who did react to the crowd’s taunts and has been duly punished for it.
Ronaldo was handed a one-game suspension by the Saudi Pro League and fined 30,000 Saudi riyals (£6,332; $8,000) in fines and fees for making what has been described as an “obscene gesture” towards fans during his Al Nassr’s team’s recent 3-2 victory over Al Shabab.
Ronaldo playing for Al Nassr (Yasser Bakhsh/Getty Images)
This was apparently in response to something he has been subjected to for much of his career: chants of ‘Messi, Messi’ from the stands. Ronaldo grabbed his ears, then squatted down and made a strange gesture with his hand near his crotch: if you were completely innocent, it might look like you were polishing a table, but if you weren’t, it might look like… well, You get the idea. .
After this, a few things come to mind. One is that, unlike Sterling and Caicedo, it clearly doesn’t take much to get a reaction from Ronaldo, one of the most famous men on the planet who is presumably very used to being shouted at by a faceless crowd. .
He and Messi have been involved in this kind of terminally tedious mortal struggle for about 15 years, the pair constantly confronting and comparing each other. So you can see why it will have become incredibly boring, to say the least, especially considering they haven’t played in the same league since 2018 and haven’t been on the same field together in a competitive match since 2020.
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Neither of them now play in Europe and their most important achievements are almost certainly in the past. The Messi-Ronaldo rivalry no longer exists, at least not to the rest of the world.
But clearly, for Ronaldo it still is, a little worm of insecurity that has crept into his soul and is lodged there. Why else would he bother to respond to the mere mention of Messi’s name?
The two situations aren’t perfect comparisons and are partly only brought together here because they both happened last week, but it’s notable how Sterling and Caicedo were able to ignore so much more personal abuse from closer proximity, while all it needed to be mentioned. of another man’s name to provoke a reaction from Ronaldo.
It’s also far from the first time. Just last November, Ronaldo silenced the crowd during Al Nassr’s match against Al Ettifaq when the chant ‘Messi, Messi’ was launched by another unimaginative group. In the larger scheme of things, these are all minor things, but one wonders about the fragility of a man’s ego that the mere mention of a rival player’s name registers, much less inspires a response of any kind, much less one that suspends you.
All of this is probably not ideal for the Saudi Pro League project either. Ronaldo was their star signing and he has been a success, he has scored many goals and aroused a lot of interest, but it was not in the plan for their key player, one of the main legitimizing factors of the league, to be suspended like this.
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Add in Jordan Henderson leaving after six months and the continuing soap opera over Karim Benzema and it’s been a mixed bag since they started throwing money around.
For Ronaldo, it’s hard to identify what it is about all of this that’s so bleak, but it could be because it’s so undignified for everyone involved. Despite being an almost superhuman athlete and an absolute phenomenon, he has limited time left in his career, so he feels a little sad that this is how he is spending his last days as a footballer.
Playing in a poor league (which wasn’t the plan, no matter how much he insists otherwise) he’s still haunted by the ghost of the man he’s been compared to his entire career, but who hasn’t really been relevant to him for years. a long time. in half a decade. Everything could have been very different.
Ronaldo and Messi playing against each other in 2020 (David Ramos/Getty Images)
Perhaps this is the inner hell of the hyper-driven mentality of someone like Ronaldo. Nothing more than being considered the best is good enough, so even mention of the only guy who could deny him that title, at least in his generation, is enough to make him angry.
You’ll dry your eyes at his incredible wealth and extraordinary list of accomplishments, but you’ll be left with the feeling that he’ll never truly be satisfied when the time comes to look back on his career.
For someone who has accomplished as much as he has, it all seems pretty bleak.
(Top photo: Yasser Bakhsh/Getty Images)
