Cristiano Ronaldo's genius driven by the audacity of mope

Cristiano Ronaldo, how do I love thee? Let me count the ways. They add up to . . . er, well, not very many, actually. But then the oily, smirking, preening little bugger scores a goal like that and, well, what is a chap supposed to do? I need help here.

• How do we solve a problem like Ronaldo?

  The Portugal forward’s extraordinary goal on Wednesday settled the tie against Porto and took Manchester United to the semi-finals of the Champions League, and I must say, I resent it very deeply. Not because it wasn’t brilliant, but because it was. He had no right to score it.

  It wasn’t his goal. It was Bobby Charlton’s goal. Ronaldo’s duplication of Charlton in his pomp played havoc with my memories and my affections. Charlton didn’t score many goals like that, but far more than any footballer has a right to. Above all, he scored the goal against Mexico in the World Cup of 1966, England’s first goal in the competition, the goal that ignited belief.

  And Ronaldo’s effort was very much the same sort of thing, the defense backing off — no one can score from here — the audacious certainty flowing into the mind of the attacker and then the thunderbolt, the impossible distance, the bulging of the net almost simultaneous with the strike.

  I have a special thing about that Mexico goal. It was the goal of my life. It was the goal that told me beyond all doubt that sport was unutterably wonderful stuff and that the impossible is sport’s daily routine. What business has Ronaldo in scoring the same goal? It’s dreadful. I must start considering Ronaldo in the same terms as Charlton. In terms of ability, anyway.

  Every time I hear someone describe Ronaldo as the best footballer in the world, I have always decisively rejected the notion. I think of others, someone, anyone . . . and yet no convincing alternative comes to mind. And that’s deeply dispiriting.

  There was no problem in admiring Bobby. He was a fabulous player, he also invariably came across as a decent fellow, a likeable man, a man of quiet charm, a man with a sense of the team and his place within it, a man who, despite his certainty about his own talent, possessed a sense of modesty and proportion.

  But with Ronaldo, you realize at once that a person can be a great footballer and at the same time insufferable. And let’s hear no nonsense about how I don’t know him, how I am not privy to his private thoughts, about his love for his family and his kindness to dogs. I do know him. We all know him. We know him from the brutal examination of human nature that is sport. Sport does not build character, sport reveals character, and much of what sport reveals in Ronaldo is uncompromisingly obnoxious.

  Please don’t feel that I am caught up in the hatred and rivalries of partisanship here. I feel no obligation to hate Manchester United and their players; au contraire, the club have given me more football to get excited about and more personalities to discuss than any other.

  It’s not just rivals of United who find Ronaldo hard to love. Neutrals feel exactly the same. He’s just too damn pleased with himself. If, after scoring that impossible goal, he had run about like a headless chicken with a grin all over this face, I might have warmed a little towards him, identified with him in his moment of triumph. But no, no smile, very determinedly no smile: look at me, I do this sort of thing all the time and I’m cooool. Instead of rejoicing for him, I felt a strong desire to kick him in the rump.

  That’s what Ronaldo does to people. Some players of great ability delight you because, in a sense, they become your representative. You revel in the skills and identify with their practitioner. Ronaldo’s skills make you identify with the tackler. You find yourself more amused than you should be when Ronaldo, instead of beating his man with 13 successive step-overs, trips over his silly prancing feet and falls on his white-shorted a**e.

  There was a special delight to be found in that grotesque penalty he took in the shoot-out in the Champions League final last year. He put in a ludicrous, affected stutter in his run, minced up to the ball and then saw his spot-kick saved. It would have been a rather depraved pleasure to far too many of us if that error had settled the tie, but it wasn’t to be.

  We always want great ability in sport to be accompanied by some kind of moral authority and, failing that, by an admirable, or at least likeable, nature. We want all great performers to be like Bobby or Freddie or Johnno or Jonny.

  But sometimes we find great ability in a person who appals us. Ivan Lendl was a wonderful tennis player, but his gloomy intensity, his joyless point-gathering and his pushing of the rules to the limits alienated many who watched him. He never won Wimbledon because we just wouldn’t let him. John McEnroe’s unstable personality and unspeakable behavior made his sport a thing of great ugliness, despite his astonishing talent.

  Michael Schumacher must have been hard even for a German to love. He was an incomparably skilled driver, he passed the supreme test of ability allied to courage every time it rained and yet his demeanor, his smugness, the air of dodginess that forever hung over him, will compromise his astonishing record always. Lewis Hamilton, the corporate-speaking mendacious tax exile, is similarly learning that talent alone is not enough to make you loveable. Diego Maradona is forever being compared to Pelé, but there is no comparison to be made: one was a mad, cheating drug addict and the other wasn’t.

  To some extent, these things are a matter of taste. Some people can’t stand Kevin Pietersen because of his overweening sense of self, his crassness, his flamboyance. I find his genius compelling, so that for me at least, he rises above his faults. It is a thing narrowly achieved, but in my eyes he just about pulls it off.

  In the same way, many people, most obviously those who strongly identify with his club, see Ronaldo as a persecuted genius. Fair enough. Such people must accept that there are other views, that Ronaldo, for all his skills, is the man who flings himself to the floor at every nudge, winks when getting a fellow pro sent off and is more convinced of his own loveliness than any man — or woman — should be.

  One last thing. Ronaldo tries a trick, gets chopped down, throws a hissy fit — then gets up and tries the same trick on the same player. That’s courage. What’s more, he tries a shot from 40 yards while everyone in the stadium is booing his every touch. Had he missed, had the ball ballooned into the stands, he would have looked a fool. But no, Ronaldo took it on, with a glorious result. Ronaldo has courage, all right, and in considerable measure. I really think he must be the best footballer in the world.

  Damn.