Are Real Madrid a ‘business’ club? Ronaldo’s comments are partly justified.

An introspective piece on how Real Madrid treats their legends, and whether Cristiano Ronaldo’s recent comments have some merit to it.

‘Cristiano Ronaldo will never really consider the Santiago Bernabeu as his home as he did with Old Trafford’ was a statement made by one of my fellow writers in a recent piece. This was of course in reference to Ronaldo’s interview with an Italian publication, where he has spoken at length about his 5 months at Juventus. He has gone on to claim that ‘this is the best group of players I have ever played with’. And that they are more of a ‘family/team’, are ‘humbler’ and where ‘some players don’t consider themselves bigger than others, as is the case elsewhere’.

There have been three sets of reactions to these comments:

Madrid fans, who were erstwhile Cristiano fans but stopped following him since he left, basically got more fodder for their agenda that he was never a true Madridista in the first place. According to them, Cristiano was just a mercenary and him leaving was good riddance. These people are the reason why Madrid’s fan base is often described as reactionary, fickle, ungrateful and what not. Because Cristiano Ronaldo is the best Madrid player in our generation and no amount of propaganda can change that.

Then there are these Cristiano fans, for whom player possibly comes first, who have gone to great lengths to justify his comments. Their reasoning is that the club (Perez) treated him poorly / forced him out, some players have been taking sly digs at him since he left, the fans have always booed him anyway and have never supported him in his bad times. And that he was overlooked for Ballon d’or and other individual awards because Perez somehow conspired against him. He owes nothing to Real Madrid, after the way the entire Madrid ecosystem has treated him. This is another extreme stand, and I don’t identify with this either.

Because I fall in the third category – my favourite club is Real Madrid and my favourite player is Cristiano Ronaldo. My love for football stems from these two entities, and nothing is ever going to change that. This category of fans has been most tormented since Ronaldo’s departure. Shots taken from either side hurt us because we can’t see one saying anything remotely negative about the other. When Madrid openly cut out Cristiano from UCL movie, we got hurt. When Cristiano’s sister alluded to Madrid as ‘mafia’ post the Ballon d’Or ceremony, we got hurt. And we will continue to be caught in this crossfire because this looks like it is going to go on for a while.

I will go back to the statement from my fellow writer, that Cristiano would never really see Madrid in the same light as United because this made me introspect. What made him conclude that? After-all, Cristiano spent his best 9 years with Madrid and became the world beater that he is today, at Madrid. Yet, many Madrid fans feel so. It’s important to understand why that may be the case, and a lot of it stems from what Real Madrid stands for.