Some child prodigies never live up to the expectations they excite. Cristiano Ronaldo has. Best known as one of soccer’s brightest, best and most outspoken wingers, Ronaldo started his career at only seventeen years of age. He started out in youth leagues and then moved to Sporting Lisbon in 2002. In just one year with the team, he’d caught the eye and opened the pocketbook of one of England’s Premier League Teams, Manchester United. It cost Manchester approximately 12 million pounds to their roster, but the young player went on to prove he was worth it.
In the next six seasons, Ronaldo played in 292 games with the Manchester club. In those games he managed to score one hundred and eighteen goals. Of course, his natural flamboyance earned him such endearing accolades as «monstrous ego» and «petulant». Ronaldo shrugged of any implied criticism. After all, whatever he was doing, it was working and working well. So well in fact that, in 2008, he scored 42 goals for Manchester United and earned the title of the FIFA World Player of the Year.
Cristiano played for Team Portugal in the 2004 and 2008 EURO and in the 2006 FIFA World Cup. The fame he garnered at Manchester and his success on the National Team were probably catalysts that set into motion the record-breaking offer by Real Madrid that enabled them to acquire Cristiano Ronaldo in June of 2009. The Spanish club reportedly paid a fee of €94-million (around $132 US) to acquire Ronaldo from Manchester.
Since joining Real Madrid to the thundering applause of the fans, Ronaldo has been slow to add to his team achievements. Between injuries and then time commitments with the National Team, he missed out on both of Madrid’s Champions League group stage matches. Then, in December he was sent off for the very first time in his career with Madrid. In the same match, he also missed a penalty and then was later carded for removing his shirt in a celebration and then for kicking an opponent. Still, it seems that the management are just waiting for his star to rise again, and for it to shine on Real Madrid this time around.
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