It's the end of the road for Ronaldinho - football's ultimate entertainer
It is somewhat fitting at a time when Dunga 's
Brazil are crying out for the element of fun and
fantasy that used to characterise their game that
the greatest entertainer of them all has reached
the end of the road.
After being withdrawn at half-time in Fluminense’s
win over Goias the previous Saturday, Ronaldinho
spent Sunday mulling over his future. After giving
it some thought he got in touch with his club and
said he wanted to talk.
"Ronaldinho asked us for a meeting,” said the
club’s sporting director Mario Bittencourt. “He
respectfully told us he didn't feel he was able to
perform as well as he wanted and that it was a
bad situation for him. So we decided releasing him
was the right thing to do.”
So that was that. Just two months and nine
appearances into an 18-month contract,
Ronaldinho left Fluminense. The fanfare and the
thousands of fans who greeted him are forgotten
and all that is left is to reflect on is yet another
dead end reached in the career of this wondrously
talented footballer. Perhaps it should also be the
last page in a story which, while still electrifying
at times, appears to have run out of steam.
In what was almost a macabre post-script, the
next time the former Barcelona and Brazil ace and
World Cup winner made the headlines was for a
car smash just hours after the announcement.
The now ex-Fluminense man was grabbed at the
side of the road by a fan, but his maudlin
expression in the photograph taken by the
beaming admirer told more eloquently than any
interview how the superstar had lost his way
among infinite transfers, hard partying and only
intermittent displays of greatness.
To be brutally honest, Ronaldinho's decline has
been in the making for at least the last eight
years. After four outstanding campaigns for
Barcelona between 2003 and 2007, his final
season in Catalonia was marked by niggly injuries
and a loss of focus. In his last twelve months at
the club he went from being unquestionably the
world’s best player, to being nudged toward the
exit door by the club’s hierarchy.
“He needs a new challenge,” claimed the club’s
then-president, Joan Laporta who, along with
coach Frank Rijkaard, had witnessed their main
man’s desire to perform dissipate. Fans became
exasperated with his lack of discipline. Ronaldinho
himself took to the press to defend his right to go
on nights out, while internally the club battled with
him over whether some of his injuries were as
serious as he was claiming.
“I truly hope that he can go out and show the
world that he can still play,” said Rijkaard. “That
time will come and he will need to react well.”
With the benefit of hindsight, that time did come -
on numerous occasions at numerous clubs – but
besides a brief resurrection at Atletico Mineiro in
2013, he has come up short every time. The
question after this latest failure is whether his
desire to perform has fallen so low that he may
now turn his back on the game completely and
retire?
“Are you crazy?” was the response of his brother
to that question when interviewed by Brazilian
newspaper Folha De Sao Paulo . “He has an
advantage over many others in that he has never
suffered from a serious injury. And while he still
has that flicker then great.”
Ronaldinho himself says that he intends to keep
playing, insisting that "offers come and go every
day".
But just where is that flicker? Where now is that
joy he so evidently used to get from the game? As
romanticised as it may sound, of all the players in
this great game, he has a style most deeply
rooted in the audacity and playfulness of the
small-sided matches he grew up playing. The
impudence of a blind pass. The blink-and-you'll-
miss-it switch of feet. The fake and nutmeg. If
that fun vanishes you are not left with the same
player. And it has certainly not been the same
player that has been turning out for Fluminense in
recent weeks.
A loose relationship with match fitness is one
thing (sometimes forgiven in the less physically
demanding environment of the South American
domestic game); but the breadth of Ronaldinho’s
lack of application at Fluminense went beyond
simple conditioning.
Whole matches passed him by - the player
seemingly more interested in appealing to the
referee for niggly fouls than keeping up with the
play or taking on creative responsibility. He left
without scoring a goal or providing an assist. And
according to WhoScored.com, in the matches he
did play he made roughly half the number of
passes per game as Internacional’s Andres
D'Alessandro, a playmaker with a similar function
at Internacional. Of those passes, 82% of
D’Alessandro’s found their target compared to
just 64% of Ronaldinho’s.
What marks his transfer to Fluminense out from
some of the others he’s had in recent years is
that the club actually had a clear strategy for how
to use him on the field. Up front they have Fred
who, in the context of Brazilian domestic football
at least, is a very capable back-to-goal striker.
They have the jet-heeled Marcos Junior who can
offer a threat running in behind. And they have the
dynamism and energy from midfield in the 18-
year-old Gerson, a bright prospect already on the
radar of many top European clubs. What they
were lacking was a player with the vision and
creativity to join all that up.
Ronaldinho, even in his imperfect, semi-fit state,
should have fitted the bill.
"We are somewhat frustrated,” admitted
Bittencourt after announcing Ronaldinho’s
premature departure, a line which could go down
as one of the understatements of the year.
“When he arrived, we expected he could do for us
what he did for so many other clubs. That's what
you think when you sign a player. He didn't do
well in Mexico, but we took our chances by
bringing him back to Rio, thinking he would do well
again.”
The most frustrating part of all this is that he still
has it in him to perform at a high level. As his
brother says, he hasn’t suffered from major
injuries during his career. And he still sees passes
nobody else sees and can leave a defender
flailing with single piece of dexterity.
When Ronaldinho was in his prime, flicking and
dribbling his way round the Camp Nou pitch, there
were few opponents, if any, who could stop him.
Now, less than a decade on, it seems that his
greatest opponent has been his own lack of desire
to maintain the remarkable level of performance
that everybody knows he is capable of.
If his ‘flicker’ does not return then - as sad as it is
to say - there really is no sporting reason why
Ronaldinho should continue playing football.
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