The younger brother greatly admired the older brother and they called each other “baby.” He felt so much devotion that the morning the police broke into the house to arrest the youngest, he was sleeping in the big one’s room, who had already become independent. Many months later, upon entering that little room of about six square meters with their father, something dazzled me. A giant image hanging in the closet where the oldest of his sons made an impressive save for the squad in a cadet game in Madrid presided over the room. I remember that stretch like it was yesterday. I remember it because I was in the other goal that day and we all put our hands on our heads when it happened. When I saw it live I thought that the dream of being a footballer involved stops like that. I also remember seeing that image for years on the boy’s profile on the Tuenti social network and analyzing it over and over again. When I mentioned this to the father, the man couldn’t believe it. In the midst of the great family drama that he was experiencing at that time due to the minor’s conviction, football—the central axis of his relationship with his “kids”—brought him back to life. Suddenly the memories were activated and he reviewed their careers. He returned for a few minutes to those moments where things were still good and his children’s dreams, and his own, were still possible. The eldest son had gone through the youth ranks of big First and Second Division clubs with quite remarkable performance. He told me that after playing in the best youth categories of Spanish football, he retired in the Third Division, disillusioned, in his early twenties, while some of his former teammates reached the elite.
The truth is that the vast majority of football careers end almost before they begin. And it also says – you only have to go to any sports centre to see this – that for certain parents, like those of these two brothers, the happiest years were those in which their children could still be footballers.
Almost all of them will soon wake up from that longing. Some will last a little longer and reach non-professional categories where you neither go up nor go down. Only a few will become professionals, and on the fingers of one hand you can count those who become stars. Cristiano Ronaldo, who lost his father in 2005 when he was barely 20 years old and had just played his first Euro Cup, may have this very much in mind. Only in this way can we understand that the Portuguese tries to perpetuate his career to the point of exhaustion and that he does not care that the entire world witnesses a decline that could have been avoided. Perhaps he is so aware that the possibility that it would have been others and not him who touched the glory is not so remote at all, that he feels the responsibility of not abandoning that ship where the impossible hopes of children and the world travel. that he is at 39 years old and for some time now the last sailor.
It is also true that for a man addicted to himself it must be very difficult to let go of his own dream. Cristiano is aware that no goal gains value over the years. The best ones will hopefully be remembered with nostalgia, but without the same emotion as when they were first sung. Just as certain photographs, books, songs or other works of art become more relevant over the years, goals touch the sky in the present moment and from there everything descends.
CR7’s performances at this Euro are far from being worthy of the player he once was. While almost all the children around him woke up before it even started, Cristiano has gone so far in his childhood dream of being a footballer that he can no longer return with the rest. It is as if, in climbing that immense mountain that is “success”, he had forgotten one crucial detail: how to get down. Seeing Cristiano celebrate in the face of Czech Republic goalkeeper Jindrich Stanek a goal that is not even his is more painful than indignant or angry. “Don’t you dare challenge me. I am still the King,” he could be shouting at him in what seems more like a desperate attempt to convince himself. Coming down to earth from wherever he is must be a pain and who knows if the route of retirement is even more dangerous for him than the one that took him to the top.
Someone should ask Cristiano if he feels the same way as those parents of children who will never be footballers, and he would also give anything to start the game again from the beginning. It is not difficult to imagine that this would be more exciting for him than living out his remaining life as a king and ex-footballer.
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