For the neutral football fan, it seems it’s increasingly hard not to dislike Cristiano Ronaldo. Just witness the abuse he receives at virtually every stadium in Spain apart from Real Madrid’s Bernabéu.
There are indeed some compelling motives to feel this way. How about his huffy indignation when a teammate fails to pass him the ball when he is in space, or those carefully rehearsed poses he strikes after scoring (or even after missing). Or the reckless use of hair gel. Or, rather more damningly, an insistence on putting his own glory ahead of that of his team (such as when he refused to celebrate a Karim Benzema goal last season, after the Frenchman followed up to sweep in Ronaldo’s own penalty miss).
And now there’s another reason to get shirty with CR7: he does nonchalant flicks and showpony moves in the middle of important games. Saturday’s 2-1 derby win against Atlético Madrid is a case in point. Real Madrid took a 2-0 lead against the run of play and the Portuguese started to open up his bag of tricks. “It’s just as well I wasn’t near him when Cristiano started doing his flicks on the wing,” warned Atlético’s Álvaro Domínguez. “I don’t know what I might have done.” Fighting talk indeed.
This isn’t the first time Ronaldo has got flippant when faced with the cross-city rivals. Last season against Atlético, he introduced his “espaldinha”, a similarly cheeky antic using his back to control the ball.
For Real supporters this is the true spirit of football, the beautiful game at its finest, proof that top players have the kind of skills ordinary folks could only dream of. For Atlético supporters, it’s just another reason to dream of giving Ronaldo a good smack around the head.
The problem is, deep down, it’s not really Ronaldo they hate. It’s the two Real Madrid vs Atlético Madrid games played each season, which every year seem to rob Atlético of six points and extend a bewildering jinx. Eleven years without beating the white nemesis. It doesn’t matter how mediocre Real have been, it doesn’t matter how well Sergio Agüero plays (and he played extremely well on Saturday), or how lightly Ronaldo seems to take this classic fixture, the same team always wins.
And to hapless Atlético, the heavily sponsored, over-coiffured, dribbling, flicking Ronaldo embodies, more than anyone else, everything they hate about Real Madrid.
BS!!! Ronaldo does the tricks for fans like me, the only reason i watch Madrid is cause of him. He wouldnt be a good player if he just did tricks against lower teams, people who hate him are people who dont like the beatiful game.
wtf is this article..soo pointless
er..pp .. people like you are called plastic supporters…
People like hate Cristiano. He is a great player and has a camera who records every gesture and movement that he does. Then everything is interpretated in a bad way. When he did the espaldihna everybody, (even atlético players) said he was coky and disrespectful. When Ronaldihno and Ibra did it, it was wonderful. Messi spat to a other player, broke the mouth ( literally) of ther and threw the ball to the public because he was hungry. Nobody said a bad word about that. if it was CR….