SOCCER:Andrew Anthony
AT some point in the coming weeks, Pirelli, the name behind the world’s most famous calendar, is likely to confirm the announcement of its latest pin-up. A 20- year old, 1,8m Brazilian, the new recruit is not the type of model normally associated with the rubber manufacturer’s glamorous image. For a start, he’s male. He shaves his head balder than a used Pirelli tyre. And he has the kind of teeth that would look more at home on a rabbit. In fact, his face has the appearance of a caricature drawn on a boiled egg. But Ronaldo Luiz Nazario de Lima has an attraction all his own: around 30- millions’ worth, if reports are to be believed.
Ronaldo – as is the privilege of icons, he requires only one name – is a thoroughly modern football phenomenon. His much anticipated move from Barcelona to Inter Milan, which is set to smash Alan Shearer’s 15-million world transfer record, demonstrates that his value extends far beyond what his talents can achieve on the field. And his talents are considerable. Voted the best player in the world last season by Fifa, the sport’s governing body, he has been hailed as the true heir to Pele, Cruyff and Maradona.
But even if his skills brought Inter the Italian league and then the European Cup, and filled the San Siro stadium for every game (Inter report that already season ticket sales are running at three times the usual rate); even if he enabled Inter to negotiate top-rate TV rights, the club could still not hope to recoup the 20- million price tag Barcelona are said to be demanding, not to mention Ronaldo’s 8- million signing-on fee and multi-million- pound wages.
This is where Pirelli comes in. The Italian industrial giant owns a 14% stake in Inter Milan. And as market leader in tyres and cables, it is also involved in a huge battle with its competitor Goodyear to exploit the ever-expanding industrialisation of South America and, in particular, Brazil – Ronaldo’s homeland. As leading scorer in Brazil’s national side, Ronaldo, needless to add, enjoys demi-god status at home. In terms of a corporate emblem, he could well be transformed into a sort of Ronaldo McDonaldo.
Thus, a barely educated lad from a working class suburb of Rio de Janeiro is set to become the symbol of a historic alliance between football and a multinational business. Of course, there have been previous economic links between the sport and outside industry. The most conspicuous being that of Juventus, the glorious Turin team, with its owners, Fiat. However, for all its extensive investment, the Agnelli family has maintained Juventus as a separate, and highly successful, sporting entity. Few people outside Italy even realise the connection.
The other major corporate input is the role of sportswear manufacturers such as Nike, Adidas and Reebok. Until now, their influence has mostly been seen as financially welcome and distantly benign. But recently, Nike inadvertently gave us a glimpse of a possible future when it, too, entered the Ronaldo negotiations. “Nike is going to try to stop Ronaldo leaving Barcelona,” announced a spokeswoman with uncharacteristic candour. “To this end, we are going to act as mediators between the club and his representatives.”
She went on to explain that Nike had offered Barcelona a 10-year kit deal worth 77-million – a background investment that could provide a whole new meaning to players kissing their shirts. Taken a few steps further, it might end with the sportswear conglomerates deciding who plays where.
The sight of two multinationals, only half behind the scenes, battling to pull the strings on the fate of one man in a pair of shorts is a telling pointer to the new globalised, televised, merchandised power of football.
But who is Ronaldo? To most people he remains largely an unseen rumour. Apart from a magical 14 seconds of footage showing a goal he scored last October in which he beat five players on a 40m run, very little of him has reached our TV screens. In this sense, he is more akin to a basketball player like Michael Jordan – someone who is practically a household name on the strength of his sportswear (Nike training shoes) profile. It was Jordan , after all, who first demonstrated the enormous potential for packaging and selling the street appeal of black sportsmen.
Ronaldo grew up in the unappealing streets of Rio’s Bento Ribeiro district. His alcoholic father and his mother, to whom he remains inseparably close, split up when Ronaldo was 14. As a boy, he trained with Rio’s biggest club, Flamengo, but was forced to quit because he could not afford the bus fare and the club refused to reimburse him. Instead, he began training with minor league side Sao Cristovao, where he was spotted by the legendary Brazilian striker Jairzinho, who signed him for Cruzeiro. By the time he was 17, Ronaldo had scored 55 goals in 57 league games and made the Brazilian national side.
Little is known about Ronaldo outside football. He is teetotal, which means he has a good chance of circumventing the route pioneered by Best, Maradona and Gazza. Bobby Robson, Barcelona’s coach, says his young charge is “respectful to all the other senior players” and the consensus among those who have met him is that he is a quiet, shy lad who is probably not burdened by profound contemplation of any nature.
The one area of his life that has exercised observers’ eyebrows is his new girlfriend Suzana Werner. A former footballer with a Brazilian woman’s team who is now a model and soap-opera actress, Werner is also the former girlfriend of Ronaldo’s Brazilian teammates, Romario and Renato. In Brazil she has earned herself the nickname of “Maria Chuteria” (which roughly translates as “Mary Boots”).
Most of his headlines, though, come from his performances on the field. As Inter Milan president Massimo Moratti put it: “He has everything: dribbling, bursts of speed, power. He’ll show us some amazing skills.” A blend of Alan Shearer and Gazza at his best, Ronaldo is undoubtedly special. That said, his Brazil coach, Mario Zagalo, says he should learn to pass.
What he has always known how to do is move. Under the guidance of a couple of Brazilian businessmen, Alexandre Martins and Reinaldo Pitta, who made their money on the dollar black market, Ronaldo has not stayed longer than two years at any club. It was Martins and Pitta who arranged his 4-million transfer to the Dutch club PSV Eindhoven. Two years later, they were behind his 13- million move to Barcelona.
And now, say Barcelona, they are the people, along with an Italian intermediary, who are encouraging Ronaldo to move to Inter. “He’s got too many of these agents,” says Robson. “Why does he need to pay 10% to three of them, instead of one? It’s them who are greedy.” In Brazil, Martins and Pitta are renowned for their catchphrase: “We have to look after the interests of nosso garoto [our boy].”
Given that the footballer had repeatedly made it clear that he wanted to stay with the Spanish side, and that he’d recently bought and decorated a large house up the coast from Barcelona, it’s hard not to conclude that it was his agents who decided his “interests” lay elsewhere. For the British agent Eric Hall, Ronaldo’s advisers are right. Hall is a leading scholar from the Show Me The Money academy. “There’s no loyalty in football,” he says. “You’ve got to get as much money as you can.” It’s an uncompromising approach, but one that is increasingly reshaping the foundations of the beautiful game. There is a bedrock, though, that may prove difficult to shift: the fans.
In Barcelona, despite the hype and his 34 goals, Ronaldo was not as popular as it is often made out. He didn’t make the right noises about Catalonia and he often appeared aloof. Perhaps the supporters sensed that the man who needs to improve his passing was just passing through. If big business attempts to reconstruct football on such a temporary footing, the whole shooting match could fail.
ENDS