Since I stepped into my 20s all my childhood heroes started to disillusion me with their inappropriateness in tune with the actual way of life. But there is only one person who is still irresistible in enthralling me by his extraterrestrial magic - that is none other than Cristiano Ronaldo. It is true of course that my love for him is now quite different from what it was in my teenage. I was actually first exposed to football during the time of World Cup 2010 when there was an extreme furore of football all around. Thanks to this football euphoria, it was very natural for an inquisitive kid like me to let myself indulge in the ecstatic flow of the football festival. Having known my ardent love for Ronaldo already, you might be surprised to learn that I became a fan of Lionel Messi at the beginning of my love-story with football. In retrospect, now I surmise that it was mostly due to the fact that to a great extent Bengalees had been fond of Argentina from the time of Diego Maradona and in the World Cup 2010 they held Messi as his perfect heir. So quite inadvertently I conformed to the trend so much so that I started collecting his photos from newspaper to adorn my personal diary (later on this act of love was reserved only for Cristiano). Till then, I did not even hear Cristiano's name. However, some time after the World Cup had ended, while leafing through the newspaper only to read the sports news since we did not have TV at our home and internet was yet to make its appearance in the rural areas like ours, I found the name 'Cristiano Ronaldo'. To be very honest, I first fell in love with the name itself, with its mellifluous tune, with the air of grandeur about it, with the exquisite rhythm of its syllables - just as in case of David Beckham also. So, my love for him began like this, in a quite bollywoodish romantic style, I suppose.
Childhood memories of paper-cuttings In my teenage, however, like the infatuation of an adolescent in his first love, I had tremendous adoration for him. I fell head over the heels for him greatly in terms of the charismatic character he embodied, his badass look, hairstyle, his baffling physic and of course his trademark style of playing football. I was more attracted to his persona than his magnificence on the field at that time. From 2010 to 2014, I had to depend largely on newspapers to follow him owing to the reason I mentioned before. In between this period he had won two ballan d'ors, one La liga and gave Real Madrid their most awaited La Decíma apart from minor individual and collective titles. I would always wait for the morning newspaper papers with an eager heart to know the result of the game played previous night and since then he has been maintaining his reputation of leaving his mark on the scoresheet in every game. I still remember an interesting remark of a sports journalist in the bengali newspaper 'Anandabazar Patrika' about this intrinsic trait of Cristiano: "Cristano Ronaldo's scoring goals in every match and Salman Khan's movie hitting 200cr on box-office is as inevitable as the rising of sun every morning." He was and he is still inevitable indeed in almost every game. From 2015, I started watching his game regularly on T.V., still as a blind fan. He also lived up to my expectations every season but then my expectations from him were extensively based on the epic Messi-Ronaldo rivalry. As a Ronaldo fan, his success over Messi was a matter of prestige for me and it was a matter of envy and shame for me in the other way around. In view of this, I used to pray to God for his success before and throughout every game he was involved in much like a distressed adolescent lover. It was quite a childhood I had! The happiest and memorable days of my teenage years were all spent in celebration of his success. The ecstatic feeling and sense of joy I used to feel whenever he succeeded individually or collectively with his team is hard to describe in words. So also the despair of his failure, even though was rare at that time, would keep me in extreme gloom. It was as if our life was inextricably connected somewhere, albeit he had no cognizance of my adoration and love for him. In his joys I used to revel and in his sorrows I used to weep like a lover whose beloved is hurt.
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| His poster on my study table |
From 2014, I started watching his game on laptop or TV consistently. Since then until now I have scarcely missed any of his games. From 2012 to 2017, it was the golden period of his career. Throughout this period, he won 4 Champions Leagues, 1 La Liga and various other trophies with Real Madrid and most importantly he gave Portugal their first international trophy, the Euro Cup in 2016 and UEFA Nations League in 2018. I remember each and every game of these tournament, how I celebrated alone in my room at mid-night after he had won these tournaments. Of all these, however, Euro Cup was the most important, I reckon, because the way he led an average Portugal team to this victory was fantabulous. I can never forget the night of the finals of all these tournaments; they are some special memories worth remembering for all my life. In 2018, he moved to Juventus FC and during the three seasons he was there, he won all individual trophies and all collective trophies with his team. However, I must admit here that, as compared to his success at Real Madrid, he got less recognition for what he achieved at Juventus owing to the comparatively low weightage of Serie A in European football. In 2021, he has now returned to Manchester United fulfiling the wishes of all of his fans. The day of his return to Man U is also memorable as a fan - since two days prior to that day I had been on twitter not to miss any bit of the information coming out over there and on that day it was like a victory for me equivalent to winning a trophy.
Maturity later purged me of the obsession about the rivalry between Messi and Ronaldo. Despite my being a Ronaldo fan, now I have enormous respect for Messi. His playing style and attributes are completely different from that of Ronaldo - Messi is like a magician and his skills are like the mellifluous tune of some celestial music whereas Ronaldo's style is tantamount to the manner of bombarding and destructing the opponent. But whatever their playing style is, nobody can negate the fact that Messi undoubtedly stands on the same position with Ronaldo insofar as greatness is concerned. Having said that I cannot help but point out the fact that there is a considerable difference between them that attracts me into becoming fan of Ronaldo rather than of Messi, that is Ronaldo's dauntless, resilient beast-mentality and extreme self-belief. I have seen very few sportsmen so far in my life with that kind of mentality. It is an undenyable fact that Ronaldo is extremely insolent and narcissistic kind of a person having a dyed-in-the-wool sense of superiority which, I think, is a negative outcome of his beast mentality and extreme self-belief. That's why he always professes that in his mind he is always the best and that if one does not think himself to be the best, one can never become the best. Well, this sort of mentality, even though very harmful to human relations, are very necessary in the field of competition. Anybody, with this frame of mind, is able to achieve whatever s/he aspires to achieve. Ronaldo, however, is never as natural a talent as Messi is but it is his beast mentality and extreme ambitions that drived him to become what he is now. Another important aspect of his mentality is that he is very much supple in transforming his playing style and moulding himself in tune with the requirements of situation in order to stay at the pinnacle of success for an astonishingly long period of time - it is, I think, the most important requisite in achieving greatness in any field. By utilizing this trait he has achieved everything wherever he went to with flying colours. But it is not that this special trait was innate in him or that he inherited it from his parents but that he developed it within himself using all his physical and mental attributes over the times by hard-work and discipline. It is the key to his consistency and longivity. Equiped with all these mental attributes and honed footballing skills, he reads the game much better than anyone else and dominates over the game like a predator.
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| Another poster of him in my room |
Ronlado's contribution in my life has been huge. Well, I must accept the fact that in my teenage, he had only attracted me in changing my hairstyle and working on my physic and that he had had no considerable impact on my character and mentality. At that time I was enamoured of his outward characteristics and even his reckless personal life (though I had not personally believed in what he used to do in his personal life). It is only when I stepped into my 20s and I was mature enough to analyse a person's character that I started imbibing the positive attributes of his character. I stopped following his outward attributes and meddling about his personal life, rather I started to have his never-give-up mentality instilled within me which I have succeeded in so far to a great extent. Ever since I have also been trying to inculcate myself with the notion of hardwork he has exemplified throughout his career. Moreover, I learned from him how to choose a smart way in doing something which contributed in the radical change of my approach towards anything. Nevertheless, the best impact he left on me is to think myself to be the best so as to inspire myself to do the hardwork it needs to reach the position of the best. It is not that thinking of this kind makes me narcissistic or megalomaniac but that smart utilization of this thinking, I believe, does have a positive outcome in anyone's career. However, I cannot deny that there were some characteristics present in him that matched with that of mine at the begining which propelled me into becoming his fans. After all we, humans, have this indigenous propensity to identify with them having some similarities with us and I was no exception.
We all have a hero or heroes in our life who inspire us, motivate us to achieve our goals in life, even though not being physically present to us, who make us follow our dreams with a hopeful heart and in doing so, they add meaning to our life. Cristiano Ronaldo is the hero in my life. I follow many people who inspire me into achieving my goals in life, into becoming the best version of myself, and most importantly, into becoming a better person and they are much more educated than Ronaldo is but with due respect to them, they have never reined my heart and mind as much as Ronaldo has been doing year in and year out. The reason behind it might be that he was the first person in my life whom I looked up to but, if so, there were other people I looked up to at the same time alongside him who now do not interest me any more in the way they used to do before. I do not know what is special about him that keeps me attracted towards him all my life but whatever it is, he is and will always be my hero. I know, I owe him something for his contributions in the thick and thin of my life.
~Imran
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