Too famous to play football? Ronaldo has outgrown the sport that shaped him | Euro 2024

TIt was somehow disturbing how the man was grabbed, jostled and dragged away by security guards on the concrete embankment beneath the boxes in the BVB stadium in Dortmund on Saturday evening, half an hour after the end of the game.

For one thing, the man looked unusually well groomed, with shiny earrings and a completely shiny Portuguese tracksuit. He also beamed incessantly, shouting things like “Big Love” and “Say hello to Georgina” and making the heart gesture with his hands, even as three men in high-visibility vests grabbed his elbows.

Was he perhaps a player? A lost member of the team? On closer inspection, his interpretation of the handsome, cool young footballer was a little fake and weak-chinned, the muscles not quite developed, the jewellery not believable. The whole tableau was watched by its own, dedicated group of spectators. “Who is he?” we asked. The spectators shrugged. “He’s Cristiano Ronaldo.”

What the stadium security guards had to deal with in that moment was a profoundly postmodern event. Here we had a Cristiano Ronaldo lookalike or a Cristiano Ronaldo cosplayer trying to break the fourth wall to connect with the actual elements of Cristiano Ronaldo’s real life, his environment, his bouncers and his family.

Perhaps the strangest thing about it was that it hardly seemed odd in context. Being a Ronaldo lookalike is a legitimate career path, given the vast number of lookalikes online and newspaper articles about the latest AMAZING CR7 DOUBLE PHOTOS, which range from shots of a young man with hair gel and making a “suuuu” gesture in a Turkish shopping mall.

A remarkable aspect of this culture is that doppelgängers always evoke shock and wonder, a feeling of reverent awe, as if it were a modern version of the medieval trade in holy relics, the collarbone of Jesus Christ, the dentures of John the Baptist. Six people stormed the pitch in Dortmund to steal a selfie. Cristiano Ronaldo’s abs turned up in honeydew melon in Manila. We thank CR7 for this content.

In Dortmund, Ronaldo’s private box during Portugal’s 3-0 win over Turkey was less a distraction and more a competitive entertainment event. Heads were craned, necks craned. Rumours circulated that one had seen YouTuber IShowSpeed, a lovable A-list court jester who latches onto very famous people (“I’m here with Vigh-Ratt Kohli!”) and has 25.4 million YouTube subscribers, more than the population of a medium-sized country like Taiwan, Mali or Burkina Faso.

None of this is new to this tournament. It’s an evolved version of a familiar phenomenon. But in Dortmund it seemed more than a little out of control. The main takeaway from the pitch invasions is that UEFA and the host country are clearly not handling this properly, having been unprepared.

This must not happen again. The lawn attackers are not only annoying to watch, but also potentially dangerous. Ronaldo has more followers on Instagram than anyone else in the world. And the people of the world are unstable to a statistically significant degree. Today’s abused doppelgänger is tomorrow’s less controlled interaction.

Who exactly is to blame? And who should adapt to cope? You get the feeling that football hasn’t really come to terms with the magnificent monster it has built here. Ronaldo is, by some standards at least, the most famous person in the world. This is a new development for the sport.

In a way, Ronaldo is now too famous to play football. Perhaps playing football will now become one of those things that very famous footballers unfortunately can no longer do, like going for a coffee or a walk around the block. Ronaldo may need to outsource that to his agents and representatives. Perhaps he could send a video message that would be played during the game.

This is no joke. It’s a question of scale. Ronaldo has 107 million more X-followers than UEFA Euro 2024. His annual base salary is roughly equivalent to the total entry fees of the 24 nations in the tournament. Having him there under normal football conditions is like hosting a Taylor Swift concert where Taylor is guarded by students and temps in high-vis vests and people can just walk in and talk to her every few minutes.

This practical problem requires a solution. The people in charge will attack UEFA because UEFA is in charge and must now deal with it. One could argue that UEFA could require Ronaldo to provide his own additional security, like Lionel Messi does in the MLS where he has a team with tasers. This is essentially Ronaldo’s own doing, a highly monetized parallel career.

For the spectator, the fan, there was the feeling that things that had nothing to do with sport were invading him, the spectacle was collapsing at its core, a really exciting group match of Euro 2024 was becoming a celebrity event. In its own way, it was another step towards one of the biggest threats to sport in its traditional form, the intrusion of the false into the real; the dilution of what is left of pure competition by an entertainment product.

It’s important to note that none of this is really Ronaldo’s fault. He is legitimately one of the best players of all time. He represents hard football, is a purist, the consummate professional. He is still good enough to be in Portugal’s team and could even help them win this European Championship. Compare his impact so far to that of Harry Kane, who is also a not exactly mobile No. 9.

Ronaldo’s fame is also a natural conduit for change that is coming from many places. From the USA, where the world’s biggest consumer economy is finally embracing the world’s biggest sport. From nation states that are using sport as a means of promoting their own soft power.

It is present when Chelsea stage a Premier League match while actors in the audience brush their teeth to promote a film, or in the increasingly closed elite leagues. It is present in the new phenomenon of amplified content from celebrity pundits, in famous names shouting at players to get private clicks, in dialogue taking place over the heads of a rapt and passive audience.

And in Dortmund, the interference of entertainment products in sport was present in its simplest form, expressed through the medium of individual Ronaldo consumers who literally interrupted the game to create a celebrity moment.

Why is it so exciting to see this in real time? In part because, despite the ongoing Ronaldification of the sporting world, it’s still hard to answer the fundamental question of why exactly he’s so popular. Or whether he’s actually popular, loved, appreciated, or just very famous, in an age where fame itself is something to be cherished. Why him? Why is he so far ahead of everyone else?

The basic appeal is obvious. Ronaldo is a great footballer. He has scored goals for very powerful clubs. And then there is his story. He represents self-made success, an underdog story, a motivational story. Ronaldo has transformed himself, perfected his body, dominated his own world. He represents the massive and brilliant accumulation of wealth. He is not only the highest paid player at the Euros, earning more than €200 million a year, but the highest paid by far (Kylian Mbappé is number 2, earning just €70 million). Andy Warhol said: “Making money is art.” Ronaldo is like a living installation. That’s how you conquer this world.

Plus, he just has that indefinable, addictive quality of the very famous. What does he even look like? Like a life-sized wedding cake topper. Like a promising sub-captain of the intergalactic fleet. Anyone can look good. Ronaldo is unmistakably good-looking, good-looking in a way that makes him always recognizable, an instant sign of the Ronaldo feeling, a button you want to push.

He is also perfect for the internet. He embodies its obsessions. Ronaldo is self-care, grooming, physical obsession. Men in particular are desperate to achieve something. Ronaldo is muscles, beauty, success, money. Who doesn’t like these things? Ronaldo presents himself as the perfect avatar of all these obsessions. Consume him like Coca-Cola. Because all Cokes are the same and all Cokes are good.

Part of it is his fundamental, inscrutable quality. People have always idolized athletes. They idolized Diego Maradona, but that seemed to have some basis in what Maradona embodied: rebellion, cockiness, flawed human brilliance and a very strong sense of his personality. What does Ronaldo actually believe in? In an age when everything revolves around politics, it seems remarkable that he essentially avoids those categories.

This is not entirely true, of course. Ronaldo supports regimes. He is currently lending his name and weight to Saudi Arabia, which is obviously a political act. His entire public appearance is also an exaggerated endorsement of extreme consumerism, the iconography of images, possessions and surfaces.

On a more fundamental level, Ronaldo was there first. He colonized this world as it was just being formed, and it’s hard to imagine anyone else achieving the same dominance in the football-social-media-corporate-cult mega-universe. There will be other stars. But no one will ever be able to be Elvis again, because Elvis was already Elvis. Ronaldo has taken that place.

As a footballer, he will continue to oscillate between those two overlapping planes, the pure sport and the pure product, as is already happening in real time in Germany. He remains the most powerful single figure in the modern history of the sport, an actor in its transformation into something else, flitting between those planes and making his own, competing noise. Hopefully there will be no more overlap for now. Let’s hand that over to you now, UEFA. Let’s just get on with the football part now.