A clip has been doing the rounds on social media following last weekend’s Carabao Cup final. We won’t share it here because those in charge don’t need any more attention than they’ve already received, but it basically involved some alleged Liverpool fans near the steps to the Wembley Royal Box filming the defeated Chelsea players as they rushed to collect the their second place medals and directing them a series of unabashed taunts.
They blew the whistle on “snake” Raheem Sterling, who left their club almost a decade ago. They also politely asked Moises Caicedo’s mother, who was apparently a factor in his decision to move to Stamford Bridge rather than Anfield in the summer: perfectly normal behavior from adults.
None of the players involved seemed to raise an eyebrow in response, which was pretty surprising when under the circumstances and with family members involved in it all, you’d know if they were going full Cantona.
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Actually, maybe it’s not that surprising: as a football player you have to develop some sort of deflection shield, an impenetrable bubble around your head so that you literally don’t hear such things, or if you do it just falls into some dead space in your brain, which never registers in your consciousness. There’s no merit in reacting: you look petty, and in the best tradition of a parent telling their child not to stand up to bullies, you’re giving him more satisfaction than he deserves.
This is a roundabout way of getting at Cristiano Ronaldo, who reacted to jeers from the crowd and has been duly punished for it.
Ronaldo was handed a one-match ban from the Saudi Pro League and fined 30,000 Saudi riyals (£6,332, $8,000) in fines and fees for making an “obscene gesture” towards fans during Al. Nassr’s recent 3-2 win over Al Shabab.
Ronaldo plays for Al Nasr (Yasser Bakhsh/Getty Images)
This was seemingly in response to something he has been subjected to for much of his career: chants of “Messi, Messi” from the stands. Ronaldo pinched his ears and then half-sat and made a strange motion of his hand near his crotch: if you were completely innocent, it might look like he was polishing a table, but if you weren’t it might look like… Well, you get the idea.
A few things came to mind after that. One is that, unlike Sterling and Caicedo, it clearly doesn’t take much to provoke a reaction from Ronaldo, one of the most famous men on the planet who is probably very used to being booed by a faceless crowd. .
He and Messi have been engaged in this sort of ultimately tedious death match for about 15 years now, the pair constantly pitted against and compared to each other. So you can see why it’s going to be incredibly tiring, to say the least, considering they haven’t played in the same league as each other since 2018 and haven’t been on the same field in a competitive game together since 2020.
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Neither is now playing in Europe and the two most important achievements are now almost certainly in the past. The Messi-Ronaldo rivalry is no longer an issue, at least not for the rest of the world.
But clearly, it still belongs to Ronaldo, a little worm of insecurity that has burrowed into his soul and is there. Why else would he bother to respond to the mere mention of Messi’s name?
The two situations aren’t perfect comparisons and are only partially brought together here because they both happened in the last week or so, but it’s remarkable how Sterling and Caicedo could ignore much more personal abuse from closer range when all it took was to mention another man’s name to provoke Ronaldo’s reaction.
It’s also far from the first time. Just last November, Ronaldo shut down the crowd during Al Nassr’s match against Al Ettifaq when the “Messi, Messi” chant was released by another unimaginative bunch. In the larger scheme of things, these are all very small things, but you wonder at the fragility of a man’s ego that the mere mention of an opposing player’s name even registers, let alone inspires a response of any kind, let alone inhibits one.
The whole thing is probably not ideal for the Saudi Pro League project either. Ronaldo was their top signing and was successful in that he scored a lot of goals and attracted plenty of interest, but it was not in the plan for their main player, one of the main legitimizing factors of the league. is thus suspended.
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Throw in Jordan Henderson leaving after six months and the continuing Karim Benzema soap opera and it’s been a mess since they started throwing money at the place.
For Ronaldo, it’s hard to put your finger on what it is that’s so grim, but it could be because it’s all so undignified for everyone involved. Despite being a quasi-superhuman and an absolute freak of an athlete, he has a limited amount of time in his career, so it’s a little sad that this is how he’s spending his final days as a footballer.
Playing in a subpar league — which wasn’t the plan, no matter how hard he insists otherwise — he’s still haunted by the ghost of the man he’s been compared to for his entire career, but who wasn’t really relevant to him recently up to half a decade. It could all have been very different.
Ronaldo and Messi play each other in 2020 (David Ramos/Getty Images)
Perhaps this is the inner hell of the hyper-driven mentality of someone like Ronaldo. Nothing short of being considered the best is good enough, so even the mention of a man who could deny him that title, at least in his generation, is enough to get him fired up.
He’ll roll his eyes at his incredible wealth and extraordinary list of accomplishments, but you get the feeling he’ll never be truly satisfied when it comes time to look back on his career.
For someone who has achieved what he has, it all feels very bleak.
(Top photo: Yasser Bakhsh/Getty Images)
