The Real Madrid Renovation Part V - Can Cristiano Ronaldo Redeem Real Madrid?

Cristiano Ronaldo really, really, really, really, really has no reason to leave Manchester and move to Madrid. After all, he is playing for one of the two biggest clubs in the world, a club that should retain the Premier League crown barring any spectacular Bayer Leverkusen-esque collapse, a club that could well thread into the final of the UEFA Champions League for the second successive season and win it too.

As for Real Madrid, they haven't reached the quarter-final stage of Europe’s most prestigious club competition for the past five seasons and of the two Liga crowns they have won in the last three years, one of them was conquered only because neither FC Barcelona nor Sevilla wanted it. And as Saturday evening’s 6-2 humiliation by archrivals Barcelona showed once again, the Blancos don't have the quality to compete against the best of the lot.

Which is precisely why Real Madrid need Cristiano Ronaldo. Need Ronaldo, mind you, and not want him as it is clear to anyone even remotely associated with football how much the nine times European champions want him and seek him.

Saturday night's drubbing at the Estadio Santiago Bernabeu showcased the lack of quality in this Real Madrid side. True, several members of this unit had won the Liga for two successive years but they have hardly been awe-inspiring. On Saturday while Barcelona ran them ragged and played a brand of football unseen in Europe for quite a while, Madrid huffed and puffed, limped and stuttered, stopped and started just as they have been doing for virtually the entire season. There was hardly any penetration though the middle and when the flanks were used, it was done so mostly by a right-back who like most world class right-backs in Spain look better in the opposition’s half than in his own and by a winger who is unreliable in terms of his fitness.

Even accounting for the injuries that Real Madrid have suffered this season, you still cannot find too many world class players in this side. Which is why Madrid were, and are, so desperate for Ronaldo. Because Ronaldo, in spite of all his diving and arrogance and flamboyant lifestyle - which is essentially his business and not someone's who lives leagues away in another part of the planet- is a world class player.

Those who deny his talent or his class and highlight his rather ostentatious side of character are either shortsighted or too busy to keep track of football. The very fact that someone by the name of Sir Alex Ferguson signed him implies that he has something special in him, something extra. And in the last two years he has shown his class and his leadership. It is hardly a secret that last season without him Man United would have ended without either the Premier League or the Champions League, and this season he is the league's top scorer with 17 goals.

42 goals in all competitions in 2007-2008 might be damn good stats to start with but football isn't entrapped in the often deceiving world of stats. Cristiano Ronaldo is essentially a winger but can drift into the middle with as much venom and creativity as he can run along the flanks. Augmented by his fancy stepovers and free-kicks skills, his dribbling is frighteningly damaging. Then there is the unpredictability and the vision to pick out a teammate from the narrowest of angles. Add to that his rather obvious willingness to fall down at the touch of a feather, which might not fool the Premier League referees anymore but would almost certainly hoodwink those blokes in Spain who keep the whistles in their mouths throughout the 90 minutes, and you can be sure that Ronaldo would be a mega-hit in the Iberian nation.

In the 2008 summer, Real Madrid ran everywhere just to make sure that they get Ronaldo’s signature on the contact papers but were always fended off by Sir Alex Ferguson. While that seemed, and maybe perhaps was, an obsession, and indeed erstwhile Madrid president Ramon Calderon was more eager to fulfill their promise of landing Ronaldo at the Bernabeu than to add quality to a side that needed it, there is no doubt that Ronaldo would have added, and would add, something extra to the Real Madrid unit.

After Saturday’s massacre at the Bernabeu, there is all the more space for the 24-year-old Portuguese international to walk into the Real Madrid unit. There is no doubt that Ronaldo would be a success in Spain. If anything, he would be even more successful and well liked in the Iberian nation for his theatrics and the quality he possesses. Of course, he wouldn't bring the innocence and boyish charm of Lionel Messi or the universal respect of Kaka but in his own special way, rather the Ronaldo-esque way, the 2008 FIFA World Player of the Year and Ballon d'Or winner would bring spice into the already spicy football in Spain.

But whether he would actually bring himself to play in Spain or not is a huge doubt.

Subhankar Mondal

Shoot and win 2x2 tickets to a Premier League Big Four match!