Is Ronaldo Worth His New Contract?

I want to be the first to congratulate Real Madrid on renewing the contract of Cristiano Ronaldo and keeping him tied to the club for another five years.

It’s a searingly good piece of football business — utterly brilliant work.

There isn’t another footballer like him anywhere in the world, and ensuring that his power, his goals, his ambition and his kudos remain tied to los Blancos is the kind of business all the other chairmen and presidents wish they were completing right now. The trophies that have come to the Bernabeu, thanks to CR7, represent merely a down payment on what’s to come, for these are the golden years.

More experienced and a better leader, Ronaldo is a phenomenal athlete and goal scorer who is at the point of accepting that, rather than the team moulding to his needs, it’s his turn to show flexibility and alter his blistering will to win to benefit the team.

Take Ferenc Puskas as an example of what 31-year-olds made of “the right stuff” can achieve at this club. He signed for Madrid at the age Ronaldo is now and went on to score more than 150 goals in not many more matches.

With due deference to the extraordinary Hungarian, Ronaldo is about 15 times the athlete he was. This is a guy who has outscored two of Madrid’s all-time greats — indeed, perhaps the two all-time greats: Alfredo Di Stefano and Raul. What’s more, he trounced their goals-per-game ratios. He smashed them.

In pure football terms, if the opportunity arose, then any great club would immediately snap up the Portuguese forward, who is a European champion with club and country as he signs this mega deal. As such, this is an ultra-shrewd move by his employers.

What’s more, Ronaldo sees himself playing until he’s 39 or 40 and retiring at Madrid. His hunger, enthusiasm and appetite for hard work remain utterly intact. So set aside petty club jealousies and look purely at the footballing facts, and salute Madrid for making an unquestionably modern, intelligent and long-yielding decision.

This is a remarkable triumph of marketing over football.

Cristiano Ronaldo’s getting a plump, new contract to extend his stay at Real Madrid looks like an immature, ill thought-out and low-yield investment.

Ronaldo’s physical powers have declined, and he is now far less likely to be the one who rockets from box-to-box on a breakaway as he dribbles past three or four opponents before finishing. Those were his trademarks — but no longer.

It’s well-documented that, instead of being the giant horsepower engine and the gleaming, sporty bodywork, he is now the silver Jaguar on the bonnet or the highly recognisable “Prancing Horse” logo.

Ronaldo is high-profile, marketable and with brilliant branding, but not, by any means, the producer of surging power. He is not the pistons, not the horsepower, not the aerodynamic bodywork to make the vehicle go faster. What lies ahead for Real Madrid is an increasingly needy player, a guy chasing his former standards but unwilling to give to teammates in order to achieve them jointly.

His football ego was previously his strongest point, with naked ambition made real through inherent ability, power, determination and self-sacrifice. Now Ronaldo won’t allow Gareth Bale and Alvaro Morata to assume more responsibility, to add speed and athleticism to Madrid’s attempts to break teams down. In football terms, this is a guy past his peak, with fewer successful dribbles, fewer free kicks on target (never mind in the net), fewer headed goals, fewer match-winning goals and greater dependence on other players to create goals for him.

Meanwhile, though he gives the impression that he needs and wants the same level of victories and success and still needs and wants to be considered “the best,” he isn’t quite as dedicated as he once was. Instead, there are more hotels, more modelling, more films, more marketing, more distractions. Above all, there is more preparation for a future without football.

A time is going to come, well within the length of this contract, when the very things that made Ronaldo truly great are going to begin to hinder those around him.

That includes his fellow strikers as well as the full-backs who have to defend without any tracking or pressing from Madrid’s No. 7. It includes the manager who, though he might feel like “rotating” or resting Ronaldo more often, will jeopardise his job security by doing so. And it includes the midfielders who’ll see a better, more productive pass but who’ll think twice about ignoring Ronaldo screaming for the ball in a position that isn’t as beneficial to the team.

It’s true he has scored more goals than Raul and Alfredo Di Stefano, but look how their Madrid careers ended. In 1964, Di Stefano was 38 and had stayed too long. But while club president Santiago Bernabeu was clear that the “Blond Arrow” must be pensioned off and take a general manager job, the Argentinian believed he had much more playing time left.

They clashed, and not only did Di Stefano not return to the club in any capacity until Bernabeu had died, but also when Di Stefano became a Liga-winning coach of Valencia, the president was quoted as saying, “Not while I’m president, not while I’m alive will that man step on the Real Madrid pitch again. No chance!”

Raul’s 2010 departure was also somewhat poisonous. He admitted that he should have left earlier, having already split Spain because of his continued absence from the national team, and there was debate about whether he was hindering or helping his club. When he finally departed, it was through the back door, as he headed to Germany without fanfare or proper regard for a scoring-trophy-captaincy legend.

“I’m sure that Alfredo Di Stefano and Raul are pleased for me,” Ronaldo speculated yesterday.

He’s entitled to express that emotion, but whether either of those mentioned would have advised Madrid to renew a 31-year-old for another five years or advised him to stay in the full confidence that this will end well, I’m not wholly convinced.

I’m sure some of you believe the first half of the argument is either true or at least broadly representative of your feelings. That is, Ronaldo is the top, Ronaldo deserves to stay, and the future remains in his hands … or boots.

Others will share the latter view: that this contract is based on past statistics, as opposed to what he’ll return in the future and that, in all but marketing power, he’s a diminishing asset.

The point is: How exactly can Real Madrid know? In football terms, at least.

Ronaldo might “sell” like hotcakes, and it might be proven that he generates more media coverage for Real Madrid around the globe than any other single player.

But that is now. The arbiters of Ronaldo’s worth have been Florentino Perez and Jose Angel Sanchez, both of whom are businessmen — not football brains.

My point is: Upon what criteria do Madrid base their guess that this is good football business?

Having increased his salary and committed to “my penultimate contract here,” Ronaldo promised: “I’m going to try and give my best over the next five years, always open to learning and knowing that football teaches you many things. Me scoring or not scoring is not as important as all of you out there seem to think I believe it is.”

Perhaps these are heartfelt promises, and he will learn, he will be open to adapting, and he will listen to what football teaches him from this age onward. Perhaps he will value team goals over personal scoring marks.

But when Madrid sat down to assess Ronaldo’s potential between now and 2021, when they conducted a strength and weakness analysis, when they tried to figure out whether it might have been an option to sell him before the end of his current deal in order to renew and improve the team and its football, which football-savvy person did a forward projection of his worth to the team, his likely trajectory, the chances of his adapting and learning and the possible impact on Madrid’s trophy hopes and the current or future coach?

In every major contract renewal, there’s an element of “best guess,” and it isn’t an exact science.

But in terms of risk management, the pertinent money involved isn’t the approximate €100 million it will take his club to fulfil their side of the bargain if Ronaldo stays until 2021. Rather, it is the coin they used to flip when they decided: “Heads, he’s going to be good enough to justify his status and salary for five more years. Tails, he isn’t.”