Cristiano Ronaldo’s fragile ego is quite sad for someone who has achieved so much

A video made the rounds on social media after the Carabao Cup final last weekend. We won’t share it here because the dum-dums responsible don’t need any more attention than they’ve already received, but it essentially involved some alleged Liverpool fans at the steps to the Wembley Royal Box filming the defeated Chelsea players as they trudged to receive the second-place medals and directed a series of nonsensical taunts at them.

They hissed at ‘the snake’ Raheem Sterling, who left their club almost a decade ago. They also politely inquired about Moises Caicedo’s mother, who was apparently a factor in his decision to move to Stamford Bridge rather than Anfield this summer: completely normal behavior for mature adults.

None of the players involved even seemed to raise an eyebrow in response, which was pretty amazing if, given the circumstances and with family members involved, you could understand them going full Cantona.

Actually, it’s perhaps not that surprising: as a football player you have to develop some kind of deflector shield, an impenetrable bubble around your head, so that you literally don’t hear that kind of thing, or if you do, it just ends up in some form. dead space in your brain that never really registers with your consciousness. There are no benefits to responding: you come across as petty and, in the finest tradition of a parent telling his child not to stand up to the bullies, you give him more satisfaction than he deserves.

That’s a roundabout way to reach Cristiano Ronaldo, who responded to the crowd’s taunts and has rightly been punished for it.

Ronaldo has been handed a one-match ban by the Saudi Pro League and fined 30,000 Saudi riyals (£6,332; $8,000) in fines and fees for making what is described as an ‘obscene gesture’ towards fans during his Al De Nassr’s recent 3-2 victory over Al Shabab.

Ronaldo plays for Al Nassr (Yasser Bakhsh/Getty Images)

This was apparently in response to something he has had to deal with for most of his career: the chants of ‘Messi, Messi’ from the stands. Ronaldo covered his ears, then half-squatted and made a strange hand gesture near his crotch: If you were completely innocent, it might look like he was cleaning a table top, but if you weren’t, it might look like… well, you get the idea. .

After this a few things came to mind. One is that, unlike Sterling and Caicedo, it is clear that it doesn’t take much to get a response from Ronaldo, one of the most famous men in the world who is presumably very used to being told by an anonymous to be shouted at in crowds. .

He and Messi have been involved in this kind of terminally nasty death struggle for about 15 years, with the pair constantly pitted against and compared to each other. So you can see why it will have become incredibly tiring to say the least, especially since they haven’t played in the same league with each other since 2018 and haven’t been on the same field together in a competitive match since 2020. .

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Neither is playing in Europe now and both of their major achievements are now almost certainly in the past. The rivalry between Messi and Ronaldo doesn’t really exist anymore, at least not for the rest of the world.

But it’s clear that it’s still about Ronaldo, a little insecurity worm that has burrowed into his soul and is stuck there. Why else would he bother to respond to the mere mention of Messi’s name?

The two situations are not perfect comparisons and are partly only brought together here because they both occurred in the past week or so, but it is remarkable how Sterling and Caicedo were able to ignore much more personal abuse at closer range when all it took was to mentioning another man’s name to elicit a response from Ronaldo.

It’s also a far cry from the first time. Last November, Ronaldo silenced the crowd during Al Nassr’s match against Al Ettifaq when the ‘Messi, Messi’ chant was belted out by another unimaginative couple. In the wider scheme of things this is all very minor stuff, but it does make you wonder how fragile a man’s ego is that the mere mention of a rival player’s name would even elicit a reaction of any kind , let alone provokes, let alone a reaction that gets you suspended.

The whole thing is probably not ideal for the Saudi Pro League project either. Ronaldo was their big signing and he has been a success as he has scored countless goals and attracted a lot of interest, but it was not in the plan that their most important player, one of the main legitimizing factors for the league, would be shelved like this.

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One year of Cristiano Ronaldo in Saudi Arabia

Add to that the departure of Jordan Henderson after six months and the ongoing soap opera surrounding Karim Benzema and it’s been a mixed bag since they started throwing money around.

For Ronaldo, it’s hard to put his finger on what makes this all so bleak, but it could be because it’s all so undignified for everyone involved. Despite being a quasi-superhuman and an absolute freak of an athlete, he only has so much time left in his career, so it just feels a little sad that this is how he’s spending his last days as a footballer.

Playing in a sub-par league – which wasn’t the plan no matter how hard he pushes – 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 a while. up to half a decade. It could all have been very different.

Ronaldo and Messi will play against each other in 2020 (David Ramos/Getty Images)

Perhaps this is the internal hell of the hyper-driven mentality of someone like Ronaldo. Nothing other than being considered the best is good enough, so even the mention of the one man who could deny him that title, at least in his generation, is enough to set him off.

He will rave about his incredible wealth and extraordinary list of achievements, but you are left with the feeling that he will never be truly satisfied when it comes time to look back on his career.

For someone who has achieved as much as he has, it all feels quite bleak.

(Top photo: Yasser Bakhsh/Getty Images)