Cristiano Ronaldo in action. (FILE photo)
A cryptic X post and the attending speculations flickered the illusion of football’s reimaging of El Dorado. A month before the Club World Cup, Cristiano Ronaldo posted that “The chapter is over”, fuelling speculations that he is leaving Al Nassr of the Saudi Pro League. Amid his rumoured suitors, read filthy rich men willing to pay earth-spinning sums for the light of a dying star, was Inter Miami, the club his greatest peer, Lionel Messi, turns up for. Miami could have been football’s Hollywood; a Messi-Ronaldo collaboration would look like the instances when Al Pacino and Robert de Niro have come together for the odd caper.
The too-fictitious-to-be-true union never happened, though not impossible in the future. After all, the whole clan of Marvel superheroes have shared the same cosmos. But as it is, Messi and Ronaldo, the greatest-ever rivals in football, keep holding a mirror to each other, gauging and forever pushing each other’s buttons. Nonetheless, imagining them as teammates is a splendid conjecture, even if they are past their prime. Ronaldo receiving a needle-of-the-eye pass from Messi on the half-turn and curling the ball with his instep into the roof of the net. Or them locked in an embrace near the touchline. Or the once-bitter fans dancing in each other’s arms.
A rivalry that defines an era in football would shed its spry hostility; the ruthlessness in their eyes could dim. A new chapter of bromance could blossom. Like Roger Federer and Rafael Nadal. The Spaniard would partner the Swiss in Federer’s farewell match.
Or, maybe, it would not. The competitiveness could take an antagonistic turn, now that they would compete in the same ring to show who is the GOAT among the GOATs. The obsession to steal the arc-lights, as countless Ballon D’Or nights would tell, could dominate the narratives. The Miami dressing room could rift, and emit toxic fumes. Ronaldo would unload his woes on Piers Morgan for the world to listen.
Maybe, Messi and Ronaldo in the same eleven would have been a terrible idea in reality. Or maybe, it was good to have remained just as an idea. Like the elusive shore of El Dorado.