Ronaldo (Brazilian footballer)

• 1. Introduction

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  Ronaldo Luís Nazário de Lima scored five goals for Cruzeiro in a single game against Bahia on the 7th of November 1993. He was 17 years old. The Brazilian football federation would soon be calling him a prodigy, European clubs would soon be breaking world transfer records to sign him, and a generation of strikers from Karim Benzema to Romelu Lukaku would spend their careers trying to do what he did. Yet within a few years of that Bahia performance, a series of catastrophic knee injuries would take him to the edge of never playing again. This is the story of O Fenomeno. How did a boy from the streets of Bento Ribeiro become the youngest FIFA World Player of the Year in history? What did his career look like at its height, before injury intervened? And what happened during those mysterious hours before the 1998 World Cup final that still sparks debate today?

• 2. Streets to Stadiums

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  Ronaldo was born on the 18th of September 1976 in Itaguaí, the third child of Nélio Nazário de Lima Sr. and Sônia dos Santos Barata. His parents separated when he was 11, and he dropped out of school to play football on the streets of Bento Ribeiro, a suburb of Rio de Janeiro. His mother would later say, "I always found him on the street playing ball with friends when he should have been in school. I know, I lost my battle."

  His first organized team was Valqueire Tenis Clube for futsal, followed by Social Ramos, where at age 12 he scored a record 166 goals in his first season of the city's youth league, including 11 of his team's 12 goals in a single match. His coach from Social Ramos, Alirio Carvalho, recalled, "What was special about Ronaldo was his attitude. It was as if he had come from the moon. Nothing disturbed him, nothing overawed him, nothing threw him off his game."

  Ronaldo would credit the futsal courts for his development. "Futsal will always be my first love," he said. That skill in tight spaces, absorbing contact, adjusting feet at speed, would later leave defenders looking foolish at the highest levels of the game.

  Former Brazilian player Jairzinho spotted him and recommended the 16-year-old to his former club Cruzeiro. Agents Reinaldo Pitta and Alexandre Martins had already signed Ronaldo at age 13, turning down offers from Botafogo and São Paulo in the process. Flamengo, the club Ronaldo supported as a boy, turned him away after he missed a practice because he could not afford the bus fare. Cruzeiro paid €50,000 for the teenager and he scored four goals on his youth team debut.

• 3. The Cruzeiro Years

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  Three months after joining Cruzeiro, Ronaldo made his professional debut on the 25th of May 1993 against Caldense in the Minas Gerais State Championship. A summer tour of Portugal quickly revealed how extraordinary he was. He scored against Belenenses, impressed new coach Carlos Alberto Silva enough to become a first-team regular, and his performance against Porto prompted a $500,000 bid from the Portuguese club, which Cruzeiro president César Masci turned down.

  On his return from Portugal, Ronaldo scored 20 goals in 21 games before the year ended. On the 5th of October 1993, he scored his first senior hat-trick in a 6-1 win over Chilean side Colo-Colo in the Supercopa Libertadores, then added two more in the second leg and three more against Uruguayan club Nacional. He finished as the tournament's top scorer with 8 goals, the youngest player in the history of the competition to achieve the feat.

  His tally of 44 goals in 47 games across two seasons at Cruzeiro led the club to their first Copa do Brasil in 1993 and the Minas Gerais State Championship in 1994. By the time the 1994 FIFA World Cup came around, Ronaldo was in the Brazilian squad at age 17, the youngest member, though he did not play a single minute as Brazil won the title. Within weeks of that tournament, he was on his way to Europe.

• 4. PSV and the Arrival

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  Brazil teammate Romário, who had played for PSV from 1988 to 1993, advised Ronaldo to join the Dutch club. On the 28th of August 1994, Ronaldo scored ten minutes into his debut against Vitesse, then scored twice on his home debut against Go Ahead Eagles. In his first season he scored 30 league goals, including a hat-trick against Utrecht, and was named Eredivisie top scorer in 1995.

  After Ronaldo scored a hat-trick against Bayer Leverkusen in the UEFA Cup, Leverkusen striker and Germany World Cup winner Rudi Völler said at a post-match press conference, "Never in my life have I seen an 18-year-old play in this way." Future Barcelona teammate Luis Enrique later reflected, "I'd seen him on television at PSV and thought 'wow'. Then he came to Barcelona. He's the most spectacular player I've ever seen."

  In his second season, a knee injury limited Ronaldo to 21 appearances, yet he still scored 19 goals. In two seasons at PSV he scored 54 goals in 58 games. He won the Dutch Cup in 1996. Those who observed him closely at PSV noted that everything that would define his later career was already visible in the teenager: the explosive pace, the blurring step-overs, the upper-body strength. Match reporter Nick Miller later wrote that Ronaldo looked complete even as a skinny teenager.

• 5. Barcelona: One Season, One Legend

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  Barcelona paid a then-world record fee of $19.5 million for Ronaldo, who joined on the 17th of July 1996. Manager Bobby Robson signed him to an eight-year contract and deployed him alone up front. In his single season at the club, Ronaldo scored 47 goals in 49 games across all competitions.

  His goal celebration never varied: arms outstretched like the statue of Christ the Redeemer above Rio de Janeiro. He helped Barcelona to the UEFA Cup Winners' Cup in 1996-97, scoring the winning goal in the final, and won the European Golden Shoe and La Liga's top scorer award with 34 goals in 37 league games. No player would score more than 30 goals in La Liga again until the 2008-09 season.

  His most celebrated goal from this period came at Compostela on the 11th of October 1996. Receiving the ball inside his own half, he evaded a cynical tackle with a drag back, outran another opponent, went past two more defenders in the box, and finished into the bottom corner. The footage was later used in a Nike advertisement that asked, "Imagine you asked God to be the best player in the world, and he listened to you." The goal was reportedly replayed 160 times on the main Spanish television channels in the 48 hours after the match.

  Robson told The New York Times that season, "I don't think I've ever seen a player at 20 have so much." José Mourinho, working as an interpreter at Barcelona, called Ronaldo "the greatest player I have ever seen in my life." By January 1997, he was openly discussed as the heir to Pelé, Diego Maradona, Johan Cruyff and Marco van Basten. At the end of 1996, aged 20, Ronaldo became the youngest recipient of the FIFA World Player of the Year award.

• 6. Inter Milan: Peak and Collapse

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  Barcelona president Josep Lluís Núñez declared "He's ours for life" shortly before contract renegotiations fell apart entirely. Inter Milan paid a new world transfer record of $27 million to sign Ronaldo in the summer of 1997, making him the second player, after Diego Maradona, to break the world transfer record twice. He was unveiled to 4,000 Inter fans at the club's training ground and was dubbed Il Fenomeno by the Italian press for the first time.

  In his debut Serie A season Ronaldo scored 25 league goals and was named Serie A Footballer of the Year. He collected the Ballon d'Or at age 21, still the youngest recipient. In the 1998 UEFA Cup Final against Lazio, Ronaldo ran through defence, went one on one with goalkeeper Luca Marchegiani, feinted right then left without touching the ball, left Marchegiani on the ground, then finished into the net. Teammate Youri Djorkaeff stated, "Ronaldo was phenomenal. He proved that he was a cut above the rest that season." Defender Alessandro Nesta, who faced him in that final, called it "the worst experience of my career."

  Then came the injuries. On the 21st of November 1999, his knee buckled during a Serie A match against Lecce. Surgery followed. On the 12th of April 2000, during his first comeback in the Coppa Italia final against Lazio, he lasted only six minutes before the knee-cap tendons ruptured completely. Physiotherapist Nilton Petrone said, "his knee-cap actually exploded," calling it the worst football injury he had ever seen. Petrone later explained the underlying condition: Ronaldo had trochlear dysplasia, an instability between the kneecap and the femur, and his explosive changes of direction at speed made injury almost inevitable.

  Ronaldo missed the entire 2000-01 season and much of the two seasons either side of it. In five years at Inter he played 99 games and scored 59 goals, with 42 of those goals coming in 58 Serie A games before the November 1999 injury. A.C. Milan defender Paolo Maldini viewed Ronaldo and Diego Maradona as the two best players he ever faced.

• 7. The 1998 Final and Its Aftermath

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  Ronaldo entered the 1998 FIFA World Cup in France as the world's best player. He scored four goals and made three assists through the group stage and knockouts, and Brazil reached the final against hosts France. Hours before kick-off, Ronaldo suffered a convulsive fit. He was removed from the starting lineup 72 minutes before the match; the team sheet with Edmundo as his replacement was submitted to the FIFA delegate and released to the world media.

  Then, after pleading that he felt fine, Ronaldo persuaded coach Mário Zagallo to reinstate him. He was the last Brazilian player out of the tunnel. During the national anthem the camera held on him. He was, according to one account, visibly absent from himself. Brazil lost 3-0 to France. Neurologist Adrian Williams of Birmingham University later stated that Ronaldo should not have played and "there is no way that he would have been able to perform to the best of his ability within 24 hours of his first fit."

  A parliamentary inquiry was launched in Brazil. Coach Zagallo admitted that fears over Ronaldo had affected the team's psychological state throughout the first half. A conspiracy grew around the sportswear company Nike, which sponsored both Ronaldo and the Brazilian national team, with some in Brazil believing the company had forced him to play. The inquiry found no wider conspiracy. Despite his performance in the final, Ronaldo was awarded the Golden Ball as tournament player for his performances leading to that match.

  Ronaldo later reflected on the loss: "We lost the World Cup but I won another cup - my life." The mystery of exactly what happened that night in Paris has never been fully resolved.

• 8. 2002: Redemption in Yokohama

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  Prior to the 2002 FIFA World Cup in South Korea and Japan, Ronaldo had barely played since rupturing the cruciate ligament in his right knee in April 2000. Brazil had struggled in qualification without him. Tim Vickery wrote, "Without Ronaldo, Brazil were a shambles, fortunate even to get to the tournament. With him, it was a different story."

  His now-famous haircut at the tournament, in which his head was shaved except for the forelock, was a deliberate distraction. He revealed later, "when I arrived in training with this haircut everybody stopped talking about the injury." Ronaldo starred alongside Rivaldo and Ronaldinho in what the press dubbed the "three R's," and the trio were named in the FIFA World Cup All-Star Team.

  In the final against Germany in Yokohama, Japan, Ronaldo scored twice in Brazil's 2-0 win. The second goal, a toe-poke finish with little back-lift while on the run, was a technique he had learned playing futsal as a boy. He finished the tournament with eight goals and won the Golden Boot as top scorer. His twin strikes in the final tied Pelé's Brazilian record of 12 career World Cup goals, and Pelé himself was there to congratulate Ronaldo as he received his winner's medal.

  Gérard Saillant, the French surgeon who had operated on Ronaldo's knee, was in the crowd as his personal guest. After the final whistle, Saillant said, "This gives hope to everyone who is injured, even those who aren't sportsmen, to see that by fighting you can make it." Ronaldo was awarded the Laureus World Sports Award for Comeback of the Year. In December 2002, when he accepted his third FIFA World Player of the Year award, he dedicated it to the medical team that had helped him recover.

  Ronaldo signed for Real Madrid for €46 million. On the first day his jersey sales broke all records at the club. He was part of the Galácticos era alongside Zinedine Zidane, Luís Figo, Roberto Carlos and David Beckham. Still sidelined by injury through October 2002, he scored twice on his debut against Alavés, the first goal coming 61 seconds after entering the pitch. That same season he scored in the final game against Athletic Bilbao to seal the La Liga title.

  In the Champions League quarter-finals, Ronaldo scored a hat-trick against Manchester United at Old Trafford. After he completed the hat-trick with a swerving strike from 30 yards, he was substituted off after 67 minutes and received a standing ovation from supporters of both clubs. He called it "a very beautiful, very special moment." Defender Wes Brown of Manchester United said, "He was just unstoppable."

  On the 3rd of December 2003, Ronaldo scored one of the fastest goals in Real Madrid's history after 15 seconds of a match against Atlético Madrid at the Bernabéu. Three days later he scored the second goal in a 2-1 win over Barcelona at the Nou Camp, Real Madrid's first league victory at that ground in 20 years. Despite weight issues and further injuries in his final two seasons, Zidane stated plainly, "Without hesitation, Ronaldo is the best player I ever played with or against."

  After leaving Real Madrid, Ronaldo had a brief spell at AC Milan, where he wore the number 99 jersey, and then returned to Brazil with Corinthians in 2009. He helped Corinthians win the Campeonato Paulista with ten goals in 14 games and the 2009 Copa do Brasil. He signed with Corinthians through 2011 and announced he would retire at the end of that contract. On the 14th of February 2011, at an emotional press conference, Ronaldo cited pain and a hypothyroidism condition as the reasons for ending his 18-year career. He acknowledged that the condition made it impossible to treat his weight without risking a doping suspension. His final words on the matter were simply: "I lost to my body."

  In September 2018 Ronaldo bought a 51% controlling stake in La Liga club Real Valladolid for €30 million, and in December 2021 he invested 400 million reais ($70 million) to take a controlling stake in his boyhood club Cruzeiro. He sold that Cruzeiro stake in April 2024. His 62 goals in 98 international appearances leave him third on Brazil's all-time scoring list.