🦁Meandering Itinerant

🚨 Thierry Henry on Cristiano Ronaldo’s situation with Portugal: “I keep hearing, ‘Look at the man Cristiano has become.’ Okay. Then look at the man he had to become. I played football when Cristiano was this skinny boy at Manchester United doing stepovers everywhere. Then suddenly every season you looked again and something had changed. Stronger. Faster. More goals. Better movement. Then Messi arrives at this ridiculous level and most footballers would’ve accepted, ‘Okay, this is the genius of our generation.’ Cristiano looked at it and apparently thought, ‘No. I’m going with him.’ Do you understand the personality required to even attempt that? If Portuguese people respect nothing else about Cristiano, respect that. One of the greatest footballers who ever lived appeared in his generation, and your boy was the one man with the audacity to look at him and say, ‘You’re not having this era to yourself.’ For more than a decade, Messi scores 50, Cristiano wants 51. Messi wins something, Cristiano comes back wanting the next one. People call that ego now. Of course there is ego. You don’t spend your life chasing impossible standards because you’re relaxed about being second. I remember watching him later in his career and thinking, ‘Surely the body will tell him enough before the mind does.’ Apparently nobody informed the mind. Now he’s 41 and we’re discussing his personality as though we’ve suddenly discovered Cristiano Ronaldo is intense. Where do people think all those goals came from? You don’t have to like every reaction. You don’t have to agree with everything he does. Portugal are allowed to prepare for life without him. But there is a difference between moving on from somebody and forgetting what that somebody gave you. That’s where I think this entire situation could’ve been handled better. Eventually every great player reaches the conversation nobody wants to have. ‘You’re not going to play every game anymore.’ Fine. Have the conversation. ‘Sometimes we’ll need you from the bench.’ Fine. Have the conversation. ‘We’re building the next generation.’ Fine. Have the conversation. But with somebody who has spent more than twenty years answering every question Portugal asked of him, you make absolutely certain he understands where he stands. You don’t allow it to reach the point where he leaves camp saying, ‘One day I’ll tell the truth,’ and everybody starts choosing sides. Maybe Cristiano has changed. Maybe age changes all of us. But one thing nobody can rewrite is how he got here. The boy who decided he was going to chase Messi somehow ended up chasing the history of football itself. You can dislike the ego. Just remember that the same ego was waking him up every morning telling him yesterday wasn’t enough. Portugal were one of the biggest beneficiaries of that obsession. That’s why, however this ends, it deserved to end with a conversation. Not a controversy.”