The younger brother greatly admired the older brother and they called each other “baby”. He was so devoted that the morning the police broke into the house to arrest the younger one, he was sleeping in the room of the older one, who had already become independent. Many months later, when I entered that little room of about six square metres next to the father of both, something dazzled me. A giant image hanging in the wardrobe where the eldest of his sons made an impressive save for the corner in a cadet match in Madrid presided over the room. I remember that stretch as if it were yesterday. I remember it because I was in the other goal that day and we all put our hands on our heads when it happened. When I saw it live I thought that the dream of being a footballer was about saves like that. I also remember seeing that image for years on the boy’s profile on the social network Tuenti and analysing it over and over again. When I mentioned this to the father, the man could not believe it. In the midst of the great family drama he was experiencing at that time due to the conviction of the minor, football – the central axis of his relationship with his “kids” – brought him back to life. Suddenly, memories came back to him and he reviewed the careers of both of them. He returned for a few minutes to those moments when things were still good and the dreams of his children, and his own, were still possible. The eldest son had been through the youth teams of big clubs in the First and Second Division with quite remarkable performance. He told me that after playing in the best lower categories of Spanish football, he retired in the Third Division, disillusioned, in his early twenties, while some of his former teammates reached the elite.
The truth is that the vast majority of football careers end almost before they begin. And it also says – you only have to go to any sports centre to see this – that for certain parents, like those of these two brothers, the happiest years were those in which their children could still be footballers.
Almost all of them will soon wake up from this longing. Some will last a little longer and reach non-professional categories where you neither go up nor down. Only a few will make it to the professional level, and you can count on the fingers of one hand the number of stars. Cristiano Ronaldo, who lost his father in 2005 when he was barely 20 and had just played in his first European Championship, may have this in mind. Only in this way can we understand why the Portuguese player is trying to perpetuate his career until exhaustion and does not care that the whole world is witness to a decline that could have been spared. Perhaps he is so aware that the possibility of others and not him touching glory is not at all so remote that he feels responsible for not abandoning this ship where the impossible hopes of children travel and of which he is, at 39 years of age and for some time now, the last sailor.
It is also true that for a man addicted to himself it must be very difficult to let go of his own dream. Cristiano is aware that no goal gains value over the years. The best ones will hopefully be remembered with nostalgia, but without the same emotion as when they were first sung. Just as certain photographs, books, songs or other works of art become more relevant over the years, goals touch the sky in the present moment and from there everything descends.
CR7’s performances at this Euro are far from being worthy of the player he once was. While almost all the children around him woke up before it even started, Cristiano has gone so far in his childhood dream of being a footballer that he can no longer return with the rest. It is as if, in climbing that immense mountain that is “success”, he had forgotten one crucial detail: how to get down. Seeing Cristiano celebrate in the face of Czech Republic goalkeeper Jindrich Stanek a goal that is not even his is more painful than indignant or angry. “Don’t you dare challenge me. I am still the King,” he could be shouting at him in what seems more like a desperate attempt to convince himself. Coming down to earth from wherever he is must be a pain and who knows if the route of retirement is even more dangerous for him than the one that took him to the top.
Someone should ask Cristiano if the same thing happens to him as those parents of children who will never be footballers and he would also give anything to start the game again from the beginning. It is not difficult to imagine that this would make him more excited than living whatever he has left in the body of a king and ex-footballer.
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