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On Tuesday, Cristiano Ronaldo’s Real Madrid lost to Schalke 04 3-4 in the second leg of the Champions League quarterfinals. Thanks to aggregate scoring, Real Madrid would advance to the next round, a 2-0 win in the first leg made sure of that. But if you were thinking that advancement was cause for any sort of celebration, you would be dead wrong. Dead wrong. Or, at the very least, not a member of the Spanish press.
Those blessed with the duty of telling the world what to think about Spanish sports made sure that everyone understood that the loss was not an achievement in disguise, but a tragedy of biblical proportions. Madrid were called “horrific, a total disaster,” and accused of still being asleep “in their hammocks.” They inspired proclamations of, “What horror!” And in the strangest but somehow most fitting metaphor for this whole fiasco, were likened to having barely survived death by a falling piano:
"For Madrid, the odds of elimination were comparable to those of being killed by a piano," Trueba wrote. "Anyone who did not watch the match could not imagine how close the keys were to the heads of the Madrid players, followed by the sound box, pedals and tail.”
Schalke has infinitely more autonomy than a falling piano, but you get the point.
You don't have to speak Spanish to understand that this is a bad thing. (Photo: @marca | Twitter)
The troubling thing is that Tuesday was not an outlier for Madrid in 2015, it was a reiteration of the norm. And the crash back to reality has hit perhaps hardest the team’s undisputed leader on the pitch: Cristiano Ronaldo. Sure, goal keeper Iker Casillas demanded the team stay on the pitch after the match and listen to their very own fans jeer them, and that was arguably the biggest show of leadership on the day. But it is with Ronaldo that this team will reach its highest highs, and consequently, he is their de facto leader.
On the field, Ronaldo’s 2015 has been good, which is to say it has been terribly disappointing. Under him, Madrid have posted a 7-2-4 record since the new year, sporting a +8 goal differential in that time. That sounds good until you look back to the blazing-like-cotton-in-a-kiln record they posted in the first half of the season: 24-1-3, with a goal differential of +71. That means, in all competitions, Madrid have drawn and lost more games in the second half of the season than they did in the first, and have managed to do so in less than half the time. Furthermore, they are no longer in the Copa del Rey, and they are looking up at Barcelona in La Liga with less than a third of the season remaining.
Speaking of Barcelona, the New Year has been nothing if not a prolonged establishment of the Catalans’ superiority. The team has the best form of any in the world, and Ronaldo’s arch rival, Lionel Messi, has caught up to him. At the start of the year, Messi trailed Ronaldo’s goal scoring rate by 23 to 32, and was even on assists. Messi now has equaled Ronaldo at 41 goals, and has recorded 6 more assists. Oh, and he also claimed one of the last records Ronaldo had a hope of securing for himself: Messi now has scored 24 La Liga hat-tricks, beating the record set by Cristiano Ronaldo, who has 23. Messi has done nothing less than remind the world that he is the greatest player alive, and Ronaldo is not.
If only the disappointment of 2015 could have just stopped at statistical obsolescence, then perhaps the year would have been merely that: a disappointment. Ignoring Madrid’s recent record and Messi’s brilliance. Forgetting that Casillas called the loss to Schalke “rock bottom.” Disregarding nearly a third of Madridistas wanting Ronaldo to be dropped from the team. And wiping from our memories any metaphors involving falling pianos. Things have gotten personal.
He doesn't exactly get left alone very often. (Photo: talkingbaws | Twitter)
In January, Ronaldo broke up with long-time girlfriend, supermodel Irina Shayk. A lot of people probably don’t believe that Ronaldo could have anything remotely close to girl trouble. These people are idiots. Going through a break up always sucks. He still could probably wipe his tears on the panties of a dozen only-too-willing supermodels if he wanted to, but sex is not what he lost. Less than a month from turning 30, with a growing son and the prospect of retirement approaching like that gigantic slow-moving bullet from Super Mario World, he lost the woman in his life. That is not a loss that can be ignored.
He was not even allowed to celebrate that aforementioned birthday properly. The day before the celebration, he and Real Madrid suffered their then-worst loss of the year, getting beat 4-0 by Atletico Madrid. That does not put a professional competitor in a good mood, a mood to party. He reportedly considered canceling the party, but ended up settling for singing his pain away. Of course, he wasn’t even allowed to do that in peace, and the Spanish media raked him over the hot coals of guilt once they heard of the party.
We know it’s hard to feel compassion for a man whose life operates on an average plane so much higher than ours that it is entirely possible we've never even dreamed of some of the things he has done. But when we look through all that has happened to him in the new year, it is hard not to feel for him. Messi is better than him again, Real Madrid is sputtering at the start of the home stretch, his girl is gone, and his birthday turned into a fiasco rather than a celebration. That is a terrible two-and-a-half months for anyone. Refusing to talk to the press is the least we would do in the face off all that. We would probably lay in bed and eat ice cream for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. Ronaldo has no such luxury. He has to go out and perform. Here’s to hoping those performances help turn the rest of 2015 into the year every Madrid fan hopes it will be.
