Ronaldo at Inter Milan: Where Genius Met Tragedy
The story of Ronaldo Nazario at Inter Milan
Harry De Cosemo makes his first appearance for The Sporting Blog by delving into the murky story of Ronaldo Nazario, the best player on the planet at the time, and his move to Inter Milan from Barcelona.
Ronaldo. THE Ronaldo.
Ronaldo at Barca
Sir Bobby Robson described it as a political storm, and he wasn’t wrong. FC Barcelona was a difficult place to be in the mid-1990s; Johan Cruyff, father of the principles the entire club builds itself on, had departed and Robson had replaced him as coach.
All the while, the president, Jose Luis Nuñez was fighting off growing disillusionment from a demanding and volatile fanbase.
In 1996/97, the Blaugrana won three trophies; the Cup Winners Cup and the Supercopa de España and the Copa Del Rey.
Robson had done better than anyone expected; he’d built a team around one incredibly special player, the man Barcelona broke the world transfer record for the previous summer.
Ronaldo Luis Nazario de Lima had arrived for £13.7million from PSV Eindhoven; Barcelona had beaten off the competition to lure him to Camp Nou.
He scored 47 goals in all competitions, and at the end of the season, went to renegotiate his contract.
Robson had been a father figure to him; the pair’s relationship was incredibly close, and the Englishman had been replaced by Louis van Gaal and ‘moved upstairs’ without his knowledge.
Nuñez completed a double of poorly judged decisions when, knowing he was dealing with the best player in the world, agreed to his demands before later reneging on them.
Inter had already been in Ronaldo’s ear, tempting a move to Serie A, only to be told his priority was to stay in Cataluña.
Once he heard what happened, though, everything changed.
Not only was Ronaldo the very first modern-day football superstar, but he was the highest-profile case of early player power. Another first soon followed as Inter broke the record Barcelona had set when signing him from PSV; Ronaldo is still the only player to become the most expensive player on the planet in successive years.
If he had stayed, he would likely have gone on to be one of the Greatest players in Barca’s history.
Moving to Inter Milan
At the San Siro, the Brazilian settled slowly, eventually picking up where he left off in Spain after a few difficult months, during which he built his fitness up.
The trouble for him was, everybody wanted a piece of him; he hadn’t just been Barcelona’s poster boy and now Inter’s, but Brazil’s too. In 1997, he played 70 games in all; his diary was bloated and overflowing and there was very little time to take stock.
Just three years had passed since he was cutting his teeth at Cruzeiro back in his homeland; perhaps his rise was too meteoric.
It is easy to forget he was only 20 when he made the move, ordinarily far too young to achieve everything he had. But he wasn’t your average footballer; he was special and soon became known as Il Fenōmeno (The Phenomenon).
Inter were picking themselves up after a disappointing campaign; they had finished third in the league and their own English coach, Roy Hodgson, had left to be replaced permanently by Luigi Simoni.
Ronaldo’s arrival was a statement of intent from Massimo Moratti, their Nuñez equivalent; after being treated so poorly at Barcelona, where he had been subjected to show press conference where a ten-year contract was waved and it was declared that he would be the club’s player “forever”, Ronaldo just wanted to be respected and treated fairly.
During his unveiling, “Ronaldo 10” shirts were everywhere; around 4,000 people had flocked to the stadium to welcome him; the deal was as phenomenal as the player.
When he finally appeared from his weeks in the gym, he was explosive; at the end of his first season, he had scored 25 goals in 32 league games and wrapped up Inter’s 3-0 UEFA Cup final victory over Lazio with one of the most famous goals of his entire career.
The way he rounded Luca Marchegiani with such ease, combined with a couple of step-overs, became his trademark. That night, he proved he was a true master of his craft.
Bad luck and bad injuries for Ronaldo
But life never really got any better than that for Ronaldo in Italy. He went off to the World Cup in France that summer a hero; Nike had signed a multimillion-dollar kit deal and marketed Brazil, the defending champions, as a “Dream Team”.
It doesn’t take a genius to work out who the jewel in their crown was. During a run to the final, Ronaldo was untouchable, but a seizure in the build-up to the match swallowed all his momentum.
He played, begging coach Mario Zagallo, who had initially named Edmundo in his place, to reinstate him. But it was all in vain; Ronaldo was out of sorts and Brazil lost to the Zinedine Zidane-inspired hosts.
Knee injuries would, almost from the moment he return to Inter, curtail the remainder of Ronaldo’s peak years.
He was still only 21 at the start of the 1998/99 campaign; there were a number of niggling issues throughout, and both members of the squad and the fanbase would begin to turn on him; it was alleged that he received special treatment from Moratti.
Everything was beginning to catch up on him; Marcelo Lippi took over as coach at the end of the season, and Christian Vieri was signed for £32million. Ronaldo needed to respond in the way that he was capable of; most of all, he needed to stay fit.
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He scored goals in the Spring after he returned, now wearing his favoured number 9 shirt. In November 1999, having already been sent off in the Derby against AC Milan for hitting out against Roberto Ayala, he scored a goal in the 6-0 rout of Lecce.
But he soon felt something; it was his knee again, and after an initial prognosis of a month’s recovery time, he was soon facing five on the sidelines.
The return came early, against Lazio at the Stadio Olímpico, the opposition against whom he enjoyed his greatest moment at Inter. They would also see his darkest, too; his knee buckled again and it was back to the treatment table. Nobody, least of all Ronaldo, could believe his luck.
By the time he eventually returned in the 2001/02 season he had missed almost two years, and he had to reinvent himself.
The World Cup redemption and Real Madrid
The combination of pace, strength and technique wasn’t as readily available to Il Fenōmeno; but his greatest asset, lethal finishing, remained. There had been doubts over his ability to play again, and the World Cup in Japan and South Korea felt like a massive ask for his fragile body to reach
But he did it, scoring eight goals and redeeming himself and Brazil after four years of pain by lifting a fifth title. Hector Cuper was Inter boss by then, and a fraught mutual relationship meant it was on to pastures new.
Real Madrid came calling and got their man.
Ronaldo’s time at Inter is complex; at times, he was as brilliant as in his days at Barcelona, but his injuries began to pile up. His motivation waned in his later years, but he remains the go-to name for fans remembering their favourite ever strikers. Considering what he was robbed of achieving, it really isn’t an overstatement to suggest he could have been the greatest footballer of all time - and he’s certainly one of the best Brazilian footballers ever.
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