CRISTIANO RONALDO: I WANT TO BREAK ALL MY RECORDS WITH REAL MADRID & RETURN TO MAN UNITED Exclusive interview: Cristiano Ronaldo on wishing to return to Manchester United, his hopes for the new season and how he dreams his son can follow in his footsteps....... Here inside Suite Four at the Circuito de Jarama, framed by a scorched and sparsely-populated dust bowl 10 miles north of Madrid, Cristiano Ronaldo can at last savour some serenity. All afternoon he has been hurled around this racetrack by Jenson Button in a P1, McLaren’s £860,000 road car, in an acrid fog of blistered rubber. “Honestly, I never realised that a guy could go so fast,” he says, unaccustomed to being upstaged in the speed department. “It was a fantastic rush. I’ll be training hard in the morning and I know that won’t feel tired, because I’ll still have the adrenalin in my body.” As he settles upon the sofa for this exclusive interview with Telegraph Sport, his four-year-old son, Cristiano Jnr, is bouncing animatedly at his feet, brought along for the ride with Button for the simple reason that “he loves cars”. The former Manchester United star, who admits he still longs for a return to Old Trafford, having prised himself out of an all-black racing suit ill-matched to the 100-degree heat, is in garb befitting a man relishing his final day of leisure for the foreseeable: plain white T-shirt, back-to-front baseball cap, and distressed denim shorts that probably cost almost as much as the two Tag Heuer watches on his wrist. The following morning, summer as he knows it will be over. Boy-racer antics will give way to the earnest business of training at Real Madrid’s Valdebebas complex, the other side of Barajas Airport, from where Ronaldo is intending to rewrite every one of his records over the next nine months. His returns last season were more than giddying enough: 17 goals in the Champions League, breaking Lionel Messi’s record for a single campaign by three, and an astonishing 51 overall from 47 games. So bounteous are his talents that he has scored in every minute of a 90-minute match – a mark even Messi cannot emulate – while sustaining his hit-rate across five years in the all-white strip at more than a goal per game, with 255 from 250. To what greater heights can he possibly aspire? “Well, it was a fantastic year,” he says. “We won the Champions League, we won La Décima, the trophy that Real Madrid had been looking for a lot. So this season we’re going to try to do the same, to win the Champions again, to win La Liga. And in terms of individual achievements I’m going to try to break my own records. I know it’s tough, but I’m going to try.” Already the La Décima label, in honour of Real’s 10th European Cup triumph, has been switched to La Undécima, the 11th, as the club seek to be the first in the Champions League era to seize back-to-back titles. Plus, Ronaldo has the Ballon d’Or to defend in December, after adding another layer of distinction as European player of the year in Monaco last week. One gap in his luminous résumé, though, remains his international form. Where his nemesis Messi at least reached a World Cup final, Ronaldo had a tournament to forget for Portugal in Brazil, bundled out in the group phase – where his contribution to a 4-0 defeat to Germany was best distilled by his marker, Jérôme Boateng, who said: “He didn’t really do anything.” So, Cristiano, where were you? “It was difficult,” he says, sighing. “It was a long, long season, many games, and at the World Cup we didn’t have the best experience: we lost to Germany, we drew with the USA, we won against Ghana. We tried hard, but there were too many injuries to important players.” Ronaldo has indicated that he, too, was forced to play with an injured knee, but does not advance this as an excuse. “It’s not easy. Compare the quality we have at Real to the national team, and it’s not the same. I’m together with my national team-mates only sometimes. We have only 10 million people in Portugal, so to find the top players is a struggle. This is the key to why Portugal have never achieved any important trophies, like the World Cup or European Championships. But we still believe. We have to be confident that one day it will happen. Maybe at Euro 2016, that’s the time we’re going to win something. I’m looking forward to that. I think it’s possible.” Cristiano Jnr has reappeared by the sofa, imploring his father for some attention. Ronaldo acknowledges that it would be his ambition for the little boy, of whom he has sole custody, to step into his extravagant golden boots but is wary of applying too much pressure. “I dream of that, but he can do whatever he wants. I would love Cristiano to be a football player, but these matters I cannot decide. I made sure to bring him here because I just love being with him, playing with him.” One glimpsed the significance of Ronaldo’s only child in his life at last winter’s Ballon d’Or ceremony in Zurich, where he dissolved into tears after Cristiano Jnr joined him on the rostrum. For a few seconds, the human qualities behind his painstakingly airbrushed public image came into sharp focus. “Definitely one of the greatest moments of my life, when he was there in my arms,” he says. “It was a moment of honesty, I guess. I felt incredibly emotional, so I cried.” With the sentiment, though, comes a ferocious work ethic. Ronaldo has drawn admiration from no less an authority than Arnold Schwarzenegger for being in “amazing shape”, following an arduous gym regime to optimise both his athleticism and his multiple modelling contracts, but even he is awed by the commitment of Button, who has admitted to starving himself to make the Formula One drivers’ required maximum weight of 70kg (154lb). “The proper word to define this is discipline,” he says. “I had the opportunity to speak with Jenson, and he told me that he always had a lot of discipline in that world. In football, too, I find that it’s good to grow up as a player, always learning something about what more you can do. At least I don’t need to control my weight constantly, to worry about whether I have one or two kilos more. But I have to be in good shape, because I have nine months of playing all the time and I need to take control of my body.” One physical complication is his knee problem, which explained his damaging absence in Real Madrid’s 4-2 defeat to Real Sociedad in San Sebastian last Saturday. But his goal in the victory over Córdoba, not to mention the two with which he sunk Sevilla in the Super Cup final in Cardiff, suggested that Ronaldo could soon be restored to his gloriously preening pomp. He shoulders some cumbersome expectations at the Bernabéu this season, after the ignominy of Real’s third-place finish behind Atlético Madrid and Barcelona in the league, and confronts a challenge in dovetailing seamlessly with new team-mates Toni Kroos, James Rodríguez and Javier Hernández. Speaking of Hernández, Ronaldo takes an interest at the events that have been unfolding at his old club Manchester United, where the departure of the Mexican striker was used to justify the celebrated acquisitions of Angel di María, Daley Blind and, of course, Radamel Falcao. He has competed in enough Madrid derbies to be mindful of the transforming qualities that Falcao, the Atlético No 9 for two years, can offer. “He is a very good player – I think United did very well, said Ronaldo, who has often said that he would like to return to Old Trafford himself. On whether the club might have been better advised chasing reinforcements in central defence instead, he argues: “I don’t think it is wrong. He will be a fantastic buy. United have not started well, with only two points from three games, so they need quality players. And Falcao is a quality player.” He also makes clear how much he would like to return to Old Trafford. I love Manchester, he says. Everyone knows that. Manchester is in my heart. I left many good friends there, the supporters are amazing and I wish I can come back one day. Ronaldo has been rather more circumspect about lauding his own club’s transfer policy, questioning the wisdom of Real president Fiorentino Pérez in recruiting Kroos and Rodríguez at a combined cost of £90 million barely 100 days after the club won the Champions League. “If I was in charge, maybe I would not do things like that,” he told Spanish reporters. Under contract in Madrid until 2016, he is still not averse to tossing the odd grenade like this at Real’s hierarchy, just to remind them of his supremacy among the new bloods. At 29, is he still in the form to set more landmarks in the game? “I’m going to do my best,” he says, grinning, as a restless Cristiano Jnr suggests to his dad that he wants to be taken home. We had better believe him.
Posted on: Thu, 04 Sep 2014 10:37:05 +0000
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