Column

TO THE GAME

I wonder whether Ronaldo, the Brazilian, is rubbing his hands in delight or fighting off the doubt. He is being tempted by the president of Italian Serie A club Siena, Giovanni Lombardi Stronati, with a pay-per-goal deal. If Ronaldo does decide to return to Italy, on offer are 100,000 Eurosfor every goal that he scores for the club.

Is it a fair deal? For sure. Ronaldo needs to score only four goals a month to earn as much as the top footballers in the world.

That will be a monetary over-achievement for the ageing star. He is a free agent at the moment, recuperating from a career-threatening knee-injury and training at Flamengo, the club he supported as a boy. He is over-weight, looking more and more like my neighbourhood mithai-wala, than the cheetah-agile Ronaldo I’d bow my head to in reverence just a couple of years ago.

Stronati knows that Ronaldo is unlikely to light up the stadium, or make him bankrupt by scoring goals by the dozen. “Someone told me he’s thinking of hanging up his boots but I’d like to offer him a last chance,” the Siena club president said while making his audacious offer.

But will Ronaldo accept? I think not. His reasons for not joining will more likely be that he wants to end his career in Brazil. Just yesterday, Ronaldo said, “It is my dream to play for Flamengo in front of a packed Maracana.”

Playing for Flamengo has been his boyhood dream, after he was rejected during his first casting trip to the club.

Sometimes I wish Ronaldo had a stronger knee. It’s that knee that’s let him down often. On February 13 this year was when it last crumbled under him. He jumped for a cross in Milan’s 1-1 draw with Livorno, collapsed, was stretchered off and taken to a hospital. He ruptured the kneecap ligament — third such occurrence of the injury. It would have left him doubting his return. Every pain, every creak foreboding.

Doctors say that by January 2009 Ronaldo should be in a position to make his return to top football. He has time to mull over his future in the game. “It will depend a lot on how I’ll be feeling in January,” Ronaldo says, adding, “I don’t want to go to Flamengo just because it is my dream or as a favour. It has to be on merit.”

I too hope it’s on merit. I too hope he doesn’t travel to Italy. For the Siena offer, generous as it may be, is an insult to the sportsman he has been. I too hope he plays his last game for Flamengo, in front of a packed Maracana. For Ronaldo deserves a send-off befitting that of a king.

He was the perfect marksmen, whose presence one would be oblivious of, till the very moment he’d make his move. He ran faster with the ball on his feet. He’d think of hundred ways of beating the goal-keeper. He’d dance his best samba on the pitch.