Jimmy Burns - Cristiano and Leo: The Race to Become the Greatest Football Player of All Time

JIMMY BURNS

CRISTIANO AND LEO

The Race to Become the Greatest Football Player of All Time

MACMILLAN

For Julia & Miriam

CONTENTS

PROLOGUE

April 2017. Real Madrid and FC Barcelona square up for the latest El Clsico. As the minutes tick away to kick-off, a capacity crowd of over 81,000 is packed into Real Madrids sizzling Bernabu Stadium, while a global audience of 600 million watches and listens through TVs, radios and computers in 185 countries, across every time zone on the planet.

And there, at the centre of the storm, are two players: Cristiano Ronaldo and Lionel Messi, the star attractions of the biggest club football show on earth, wearing their totemic initials and shirt numbers. Such is the interest in CR7 and LM10 in this, the 234th episode of the most legendary rivalry in football, that the attention of the forty fixed cameras in the stadium and two super-slow-motion rigs are exclusively focused on them.

The ongoing battle between these two hugely talented players is, of course, being played against the backdrop of one of the most enduring and politically charged rivalries in sport. Its Castile vs Catalonia, Franco vs the freedom fighters, expensive galcticos vs homegrown stars. With six rounds of games to be played, Barcelona find themselves three points behind leaders Madrid, who also have a game in hand. A win will bring Barcelona level on points, but defeat will allow Madrid to open up a six-point gap at the top of the table.

Cristiano Ronaldo comes out last of the Madrid players, the headliner, bouncing like a pogo stick. Pristine and swaggering.

By contrast, Lionel Messi comes out with his head bowed, shoulders hunched, expressionless, only briefly looking up and surveying the crowd through a black eye and from behind a beard. For him, the game comes at the end of a week of speculation that he is reaching the end of the season battered, worn out; Barcelonas loss to Juventus in their Champions League semi-final three days previously has proved the players have hit a wall, and not even their talisman is able to lift a team in urgent need of regeneration.

The game gets off to an explosive start. Within two minutes of the opening whistle, Ronaldo theatrically claims a penalty after FC Barcelonas defender Samuel Umtiti leaves a leg trailing in the box. Play on. Ten minutes later, Ronaldo tests Barcelona keeper Marc-Andr ter Stegen with a stinging drive.

Now its Messis turn. He nutmegs Casemiro and dribbles free in midfield, before the Brazilian recovers by hacking the Argentinian down. With each player seeking to land the first blow, Ronaldo strikes again, this time more powerfully, just inside the box, only to have his effort parried by the FC Barcelona keeper. With the pace of the match intensifying, Messi requires medical attention after Marcelos elbow catches him in the mouth, producing a torrent of blood that looks worse than it is. And so it continues, end-to-end, engulfed in the roar of the crowd.

Midway through the first half, Gareth Bale pressures Bara stalwart Gerard Piqu into conceding a corner. Barcelona fail to clear it properly, Marcelos deep cross is poked against the post by a stretching Sergio Ramos, and Casemiro bundles it over the line. A scruffy goal, but the Madridistas dont care.

Messi is still playing with a blood-soaked bandage in his mouth, and suddenly this seems to inspire him. He collects a perfectly cushioned pass from Ivan Rakiti and accelerates into the box the ball perfectly controlled, his small frame almost brushing the ground as he changes direction before finding the net with a precise left-footed shot. He nearly claims a second five minutes before half-time, when he pounces onto a loose ball and chips just wide of the goal. Just before the end of the half, theres time for him to somehow sidefoot just the wrong side of the post from a corner. Messi means business.

The second half continues in the same vein. A fierce Benzema header is saved by ter Stegen; Paco Alccers toe-poke is blocked by Keylor Navas in the Madrid goal.

Its time for Ronaldo to come back into focus. In the sixty-sixth minute, he attempts a stretching overhead kick which sails over the bar. Minutes later, Marco Asensio puts him through on goal, but hes off-balance and blazes over.

The heavyweights are still trading blows, unwilling to concede ground. But then, in the seventy-third minute, the ball bobbles to Rakiti just outside the Madrid box. With six defenders in front of him, the Croatian international turns inside onto his left foot and bends a perfect shot into the corner of the net.

21 Bara.

Five minutes later, Madrids captain Sergio Ramos receives his fifth Clsico red card for a wild, two-footed challenge on Messi. It seems like game over, but then in the eighty-fifth minute, Madrids forgotten man, the Colombian attacker James Rodrguez, somehow arrives at the near post unmarked and spoons a shot into the roof of the net. As the clock ticks into the second minute of stoppage time, it is somehow Real who look the more likely winners.

A brilliant change of pace allows Barcelonas Sergi Roberto some space in midfield and he finds Andr Gomes. The Portuguese slips the ball to Jordi Alba on the overlap, whose cutback falls into the path of who else? Lionel Messi. His low shot is unerring and the net bulges the final kick of the match, his 500th goal for Barcelona. The Real Madrid fans are stunned into silence, the title race is back on. As he wheels away to celebrate, pumping his fists, he pulls off his shirt, holding it with arms stretched out to the crowd, still, as if his identity was in any doubt.

Of the several images of a memorable El Clsico, few will endure with such iconographic intensity as that of Messi, holding up his number 10 Bara shirt to the Bernabu crowd.

The other slow-motion camera catches Ronaldo grimacing and lifting his arms to the sky with a look of frustration and disillusion. In the end, it was Messis willpower, resilience and shuffling magic that prevailed, even in hostile territory where he was the enemys main target.

Fans at the Bernabu are even more exacting than those at Barcelonas Nou Camp. Perhaps, for those in the Spanish capital, the political and cultural identity of the club matters less than winning football. They expect and demand the best from their star players, as those at the citys nearby bullring do of the countrys best matadors, not least in encounters with their historic rival. They are an excitable, polarized, visceral, tribally obsessive lot, and yet capable of showing respect when it is due, even to the sworn enemy just as the bullfight crowd can rise to applaud a brave bull. Messi was the man of the match in that El Clsico of April 2017, the undisputed hero, and the Madridistas knew it.

Not even Messi knew what moved him to that act of defiantly showing off his shirt. A man not known for articulating his feelings, Messi says afterwards that he did it as a tribute to the few hundred Bara fans who had endured the game up in the gods. But it is a cathartic moment. Perhaps, after all, he has it in him to carry his team across the line, to justify the faith those fans show in those who wear the shirt.

In the end, though, both teams won the remainder of their games, meaning that it was Real Madrid who won the League, by just three points. Messi won the battle, but Ronaldo the war. Just a week later, after sealing the League title, Ronaldo lay on the pitch, overcome by joy at the final whistle, as Real thumped Juventus 41 to claim the European Cup. He had scored two goals, his forty-first and forty-second of the season. It wasnt enough to win him the Golden Shoe, though. That honour went to Lionel Messi.