Skip to main content

Generation Ronaldo: How Cristiano Ronaldo changed the world


When your plane lands on the Portuguese island of Madeira, your journey terminates at Cristiano Ronaldo International Airport. From there you can take a car into town and get your head down at the Pestana CR7 Funchal, Madeira’s trendiest hotel located right on its glistening waterfront.

Real Madrid’s all-time record goalscorer, naturally, will be staring down on you from the walls along the corridors. The carpets are a luxurious thick green, to remind you of a football pitch - the setting for Ronaldo’s fortune and glory.

Spend one night there and you get an autographed postcard from the man himself. Stay a second night and you’re upgraded to a signed football.
Another one of these Pestana CR7 hotels – part-owned by Madeira’s favourite son – has since opened on the mainland in Lisbon with one due to open in Madrid and a further property imminent in New York.

Kick back and relax, pull up your CR7 blanket and on the complementary Apple TV stick on “Ronaldo”– the documentary.

Shower and revive and slip on your CR7 underwear, your CR7 denim jeans and your CR7 shirt. Give yourself a little splash of CR7 fragrance and lace up your handmade CR7 footwear and you’re ready for your trip out.

Next door you’ll find Museu CR7, dedicated to Ronaldo’s rampant individual and collective success. You’ll see replicas of his Champions League trophies, his Ballons d’Or and if you look carefully you’ll see one of his Goal 50 awards too.

Take a selfie on your #CR7Selfie app with the bronze Cristiano Ronaldo statue outside so you’ll have a memento forever.



Ronaldo’s impact as a footballer has been well-documented with four Champions Leagues, four Ballons d’Or and, now, five Goal 50 awards. No one has scored more goals for Real Madrid or for Portugal and he is destined to be remembered as one of the all-time greats. But he brings far more to the table than those great players who have gone before him.

“George Best has said a lot of footballers have been compared to him but only the Ronaldo comparison was flattering,” Simpson continues.

“Best was a new kind of footballer, he was a footballer pop star. You could say in the early noughties that David Beckham was the nearest thing we had to a pop star.

“After Ronaldo the bar’s been raised very high for a globally successful footballer.”


At 32, Ronaldo remains at the peak of his powers. His relentless consistency combined with his stunning physique means he is going to be around for some time yet. Real Madrid are having difficulties in working out their form this season but by the time spring rolls round, the European champions and their star forward will be back in the conversation.

His home island is fast becoming Ronaldo Land and in the future we will look back at this era as the one when one boy from Madeira conquered the world.




Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Comment here

Popular posts from this blog

Michael Kors Buys Italy's Versace Fashion House For $2.12 Billion

Fashion company Michael Kors is buying Versace, the Italian luxury brand founded by Gianni Versace in 1978, for $2.12 billion. The two fashion houses made the announcement Tuesday, one day after speculation spread about a potential deal. Donatella Versace, the artistic director of the Milan-based fashion house who helped lead the company after her brother's death in 1997, said it's the perfect time for the company to join with Michael Kors. "It has been more than 20 years since I took over the company along with my brother Santo and daughter Allegra," Donatella Versace said in a news release. "I am proud that Versace remains very strong in both fashion and modern culture."
Post a Comment
Read more

Flair, parties, the exuberant world of Ronaldinho

The man who once lobbed England’s David Seaman from 40 yards, Ronaldinho has officially hung up his boots following a career of backheels, nutmegs, no-look passes, and Parisian party nights. Tricks, flicks and stepovers, to watch Ronaldinho play in his prime was to savour a festival of the “jogo bonito” — the beautiful game in his native Portuguese — and that always with his goofy smile. Both on and off the pitch, Ronaldinho was a free spirit, almost as infamous for his nocturnal lifestyle as he was famous for his silky skills. And it was the former that perhaps contributed to a gradual petering out of what was nonetheless a trophy-laden career. World Cup winner in 2002, Ballon d’Or winner in 2005, Champions League winner in 2006 and Copa Libertadores winner in 2013, Ronaldinho won the lot for both club and country. “God has been good to me, he allowed me to live football,” Ronaldinho told So Foot magazine in July. “I loved what I did… and I had the satisfaction of enjoying myse
1 comment
Read more

Islamic State releases purported audio message from Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi

The leader of the Islamic State group urged followers to burn their enemies everywhere and target "media centers of the infidels," according to an audio recording released Thursday that the extremists said was by Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi. The reclusive leader of Islamic State, who has only appeared in public once, also vowed to continue fighting and lavished praise on his jihadis for their valor in the battlefield — despite the militants' loss of the northern Iraqi city of Mosul in July. "You soldiers of the caliphate, heroes of Islam and carriers of banners: light a fire against your enemies," said al-Baghdadi, a shadowy cleric who has been surrounded by controversy since the Sunni terror group emerged from al-Qaida in Iraq, its forerunner. Russian officials said in June there was a "high probability" that al-Baghdadi had died in a Russian airstrike on the outskirts of the Syrian city of Raqqa, the group's de facto capital. US officials later said
Post a Comment
Read more