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Ronaldo and Arshavin: Money or dream?
By Rob Hughes
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Cristiano Ronaldo walking on crutches Tuesday
after an operation on his injured right ankle. Photo:
Robin van Lonkhuijsen/Reuters
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There should be no prouder place in the sporting world
this summer than Spain. Its national soccer team reigns over Europe with
a style that flows as only the Latin game can. Rafael Nadal wins Wimbledon
with the force of a bull and the manners of a gent.
Who would not want to play in Spain? What gifted athlete would resist,
all other things being equal, the opportunity to perform in a land that
seems to have recaptured not just the trick of winning, but the habits
that went with it many years ago? It might be fleeting, because that is
the nature of sport. Yet the presence at Wimbledon of Manola Santana,
the last Spaniard to win the crown there 42 years ago, was more significant
than that of the prince and princess of the Asturias, or of the king and
queen in Vienna's Prater Stadium when the soccer team won there last month.
For sport, in the Spanish soul, is a form of royalty.
Therefore, it is not surprising that Cristiano Ronaldo and Andrei Arshavin,
two of the most coveted soccer players of the moment, appear to be hoping
that their next career move takes them to Spain.
Ronaldo left a hospital Tuesday morning after surgery on an ankle that
has troubled him even in his finest season. A sportsman laid low through
injury, with time on his mind, is a vulnerable person, especially when
Real Madrid is his suitor and when his own mentor at Manchester United,
the assistant coach Carlos Queiroz, is about to go home to manage the
Portuguese national side.
Ronaldo is 23, at the top of his game and with a club at the pinnacle
of Europe. But Madrid, closer to his roots and, he says, a club whose
grandeur forged his boyhood dreams, might never come knocking on his door
as it clearly is doing now.
Arshavin, the Russian playmaker, is four years older - and four years
is a long time in the prime years of an athlete, physically and mentally.
The team that Arshavin says he grew up longing to play for is Barcelona.
And Barca just happens to be reconstructing its squad - fervently looking
for a new creator after becoming disillusioned with the Brazilian partygoer
Ronaldinho, and looking toward St. Petersburg, where Arshavin has grown,
man and boy, with both the Zenit side that won the UEFA Cup and the Russian
team that attracted praise at Euro 2008.
Indeed, although it was twice eclipsed by the Spanish feast of football
in June, Russia completely confounded the Netherlands - and Arshavin was
the pivotal player, through his innate ability to suddenly switch the
play and both beguile the opposition and finish it off.
Soccer, of course, is not simply a sport that can put grown-up boys in
touch with their childhood dreams. It is business, ruthless and selfish
and completely fickle in its loyalties.
Andrei Arshavin might be sincere in his desire to wear the claret and
blue of Barcelona, but his club Zenit, bankrolled by Gazprom, one of the
world's most powerful energy companies, will not let him go cheaply. Nor
will Arshavin's agent let his man go for sentiment's sake to a lower bidder.
The agent, Dennis Lachter, is briefing newspapers on the deal. Zenit,
he says, will not accept a cent less than ?30 million, and his player
is looking for ?4 million per year, net of taxes. The transfer would thus
pan out at ?52 million, or over $80 million, over a three-to-four-year
contract.
And there are deals within deals. Barcelona has made an offer, but not
one that Zenit will accept - and meantime, Barca is negotiating to hire
Alexander Hleb from the London club Arsenal. It would also like to sign
Arsenal's striker Emmanuel Adebayor, but so would AC Milan.
The summer transfer market is only now gathering pace. Lachter is in the
position of many a middleman, wanting to push his client to the highest
bidder, yet dependent on Zenit's president, Alexander Dyukov, to make
the call on which buyer meets his terms before the agent can start earning
his percentage on the wages.
"Its not about money," insists Lachter. "It's about the
team and professional ambition." Something tells us we have heard
those lines before, and that many a star from Hollywood to the Bernabeu
or the Camp Nou has been persuaded to take the money route ahead of these
childhood wishes.
Consider, again, Cristiano Ronaldo. At 7, he's a boy turning heads in
Madeira. At 12, he leaves home to become a recruit of the Alcochete, the
soccer kindergarten of Sporting Club in Lisbon. The head coach there is
Carlos Queiroz, the very same Queiroz who formed the Golden Generation
of Portuguese youth, and who is about to defect from Manchester United
to regain control of Portugal's national team.
At the start of the Euro, when Ronaldo's head was in the clouds because
of Madrid's constantly reported overtures, Queiroz, who was fired after
an unhappy year as Real's coach, was counseling the player to stay true
to his United contract. However, Luiz Felipe Scolari, then the Portuguese
national coach but about to accept an offer he could not refuse to move
to Chelsea, told Ronaldo that offers from Real Madrid come once in a lifetime.
He should take it.
A cynic might say that Scolari, with one foot outside his own camp, should
not have been stoking disloyalty to his star player. Another cynic might
argue that Queiroz, with Portugal rather than Manchester his future, was
not the best preacher to a United player.
Not surprisingly, we did not see Ronaldo in all his peacock finery at
the Euro. He tried, I am sure, to play for his country as imperiously
well as he had done for his club. But his ankle was sore, and his head,
maybe even his heart, was divided.
If any of us had the casting vote on the most decisive, as well as most
eye- catching, individual in soccer today, it would be Ronaldo.
If I were Alex Ferguson, the United coach, or his American paymasters,
I would sell Ronaldo. The contradiction might appear glaring, but so is
the situation in which Ronaldo, unlikely to surpass his 42 goals for United
last season, toys with the European champion club.
Real Madrid, as usual, shamelessly exploits the Spanish media. Its president,
Ramon Calderon, makes Ferguson's blood boil with his comments.
Madrid talks constantly of a transfer that would make United between ?80
million and ?100 million and make Ronaldo the highest-paid player on earth.
"We cannot be blamed if nearly every player wants to come to Real
Madrid," says Calderon, a lawyer. "If I were Manchester United,
I'd be happy and proud to be able to negotiate such a transfer for one
of my players. Everything would be a lot easier if United realized that
they could pull off the transfer of the century." Ronaldo begins
his recuperation knowing he will miss the start of the English season
in August, but could just make the Spanish kick off.
International
Herald Tribune, July 8, 2008
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