In April 2000, having missed almost six months of football through a ruptured
knee tendon, Ronaldo, the great Brazilian forward, made his long-awaited comeback.
He trotted on as a second-half substitute for Inter Milan against Lazio and, with his first
few touches, teased the form that has twice made him the world’s most expensive player.
A ste-over, a quick burst of pace.
But after just six minutes: disaster. Carrying the ball towards Lazio’s box
and under no challenge, Ronaldo suddenly crumpled to the floor.
As he clutched his right knee, screaming in agony, players from both sides
frantically called for the physios, while a hush descended on the Stadio Olimpico.
The career of the world’s best player was suddenly in serious doubt.
Ronaldo was a physical marvel. At his peak,
football had never seen a player who combined skill with such overwhelming speed and strength,
as well as immaculate co-ordination. He was truly Il Fenomeno – and it was for good reason that,
first, Barcelona, and then Internazionale, had broken the world transfer record to sign him.
And when Ronaldo left Camp Nou for San Siro in 1997,
he took to Serie A immediately. He scored 34 all-competition goals in his debut season,
as Inter won the UEFA Cup, and he averaged more than a goal a game in an injury disrupted second.
The first significant injury – the tear in his knee tendon - occurred in November 1999,
in the first half of a game against Lecce. It wasn’t entirely unexpected, either.
Speaking to FourFourTwo magazine in 2018, Nilton Petrone, Ronaldo’s former physio,
explained that Inter had been monitoring issues with the centre-forward’s joints and tendons
for some time, and that durability issues were inevitable for someone of his build and skillset.
“Athletes that have a lot of power are also at risk of muscle and tendon injuries”,
Petrone said. “Slow individuals normally don’t suffer these types of problems.
But Ronaldo’s injuries weren’t because his body was weak, but because of his explosive capacity.”
Ronaldo may have been a very powerful player, but he was also highly skilful and agile, too. But
that meant that the forceful changes of direction that were at the heart of his effectiveness
and made him so difficult to defend also exerted additional, enormous stress on his body.
Following the Lecce injury, he underwent an operation and Paris and began six months of rehab,
at the end of which and following rehabilitation he was deemed fit enough to play some part in the
first-leg of the Copa Italia final against Lazio. He couldn’t start, but manager Marcelo Lippi was
assured that his prized asset was fit enough for the bench and good for half-an-hour if needed.
It should have been the perfect script: Inter were 2-1 down at the beginning of the second-half
and Ronaldo took the field, seemingly destined to swing the tie back the Nerazzurri’s way.
The comeback would last barely five minutes.
Lying broken on the pitch, with his face contorted with agony,
Ronaldo was comforted by players from both sides. Like the quiet in the stadium,
the scenes described his status in the game, the injury difficulties he had
already experienced and his transcendent place in Italian football at the time.
And the injury was every bit as horrific as it looked; his knee-cap tendon had torn completely.
It “had exploded”, remembered Nilton Petrone. His kneecap “ended up in the middle of his thigh”.
He was stretchered from the pitch in tears and taken to hospital;
he wouldn’t see a football pitch again until September 2001.
“It was sheer agony, it was a very tough period” Ronaldo reflected in an interview with FIFA.com.
Alongside gruelling, nine-hour-a-day rehabilitation sessions – which he described
as “endless torture” – Ronaldo, who became a father for the firs time during his recovery,
endured a media commentary which insisted that if he returned at all,
he would surely never be the same player again.
How could he? How could a surgically repaired knee-joint withstand the strain
of such a explosive playing style?
Well, remarkably, it would. And it would help author the most perfect redemption story.
Ronaldo would miss the whole of the 2000-01 season, and he wouldn’t score another Serie A goal
until December 2001. His form was sporadic and his goalscoring was regular rather than prolific.
A concern for Brazil, with the World Cup approaching and their qualifying campaign
less than convincing. The Selecao had suffered defeats to Uruguay,
Argentina and Bolivia on the way to a disappointing third-place in their section.
Good enough to book a place at the tournament, but not to impress anybody.
And yet even without a full season behind him, Ronaldo produced a World Cup performance
for the ages. It would prove an important part of his legacy. Four years before, his World Cup
in France had ended in defeat to the home nation and suggestions that he’d suffered a dressing-room
seizure before the final. But in 2002 he was 25 years-old and in his theoretical prime. He already
had a World Cup medal, he’d been a non-playing member of the side who had won in the USA in 1994,
but he would never have a better chance of immortalising himself.
And he was dominant in South Korea and Japan. He’d score four times in the group as Brazil progressed
to the knockout stage. In the round-of-16 he’d put Belgium away on the counter-attack
to seal a 2-0 win. In the semi-finals his slaloming run and opportunistic finish
would be enough to beat Turkey. And in the final against Germany, with the whole world watching,
he would pounce on an Oliver Kahn error to give Brazil the lead, before deciding the game – and
the tournament – with a bloodless sidefoot into the far corner, 11 minutes from time.
Brazil were World Champions. Ronaldo was the golden boot winner,
with an eight-goal tally that nobody has matched at the tournaments since,
and – at the end of the year - he was awarded the Ballon d’Or, recrowning him
as the best player in the world and restoring him as the defining talent of his generation.