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Ronaldo
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Ronaldo Luís Nazário de Lima (; born September 18, 1976), referred to simply as Ronaldo, is a Brazilian professional footballer who currently plays for Campeonato Brasileiro club Corinthians. His nickname is ("The Phenomenon").
Having begun his professional career at Brazilian side Cruzeiro, Ronaldo signed with PSV in 1994, and after that he had tenures with Barcelona, Internazionale, Real Madrid, and Milan.
A former member of the Brazil national football team, Ronaldo has played 97 international matches, and was part of the Brazilian squads that won the 1994 and 2002 World Cups.
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Encyclopedia
Ronaldo Luís Nazário de Lima (; born September 18, 1976), referred to simply as Ronaldo, is a Brazilian professional footballer who currently plays for Campeonato Brasileiro club Corinthians. His nickname is ("The Phenomenon").
Having begun his professional career at Brazilian side Cruzeiro, Ronaldo signed with PSV in 1994, and after that he had tenures with Barcelona, Internazionale, Real Madrid, and Milan.
A former member of the Brazil national football team, Ronaldo has played 97 international matches, and was part of the Brazilian squads that won the 1994 and 2002 World Cups. He is the highest goalscorer in the history of the World Cup with 15 goals, having surpassed Gerd Müller's previous record of 14 at the 2006 tournament.
Ronaldo is a two-time Ballon d'Or winner (1997 and 2002), and is one of only two men to have won the FIFA Player of the Year award three times, along with Zinédine Zidane. In 2007 he was named in the best starting eleven of all-time by France Football.
Club career
Cruzeiro and early career
After being scouted by Piet de Visser, he was soon transferred for US$6 million to PSV, where he scored 42 goals in 46 league games and reached a total of 54 goals in 57 official appearances. With PSV, Ronaldo won the Dutch Cup in 1996 and was Eredivisie top scorer in 1995.
Barcelona
Later, he attracted the attention of Barcelona. He played for Barça in the 1996-97 season, scoring 47 goals in 49 games (including appearances in the Spanish Cup & Spanish Supercup and European Cup Winners Cup) on the way to leading the Catalan side to UEFA Cup Winners' Cup triumph (where he capped the season with the winning goal in the cup final itself) and to Spanish Cup and Spanish Supercup. He also won La Liga top scorer award in 1997 and as of 2008, Ronaldo is the last player to score more than 30 goals in one season in the Spanish La Liga.
Internazionale
Inter signed him the following year, and Ronaldo duly helped them repeat his former side's cup-winning run, this time in the UEFA Cup.
On November 21, 1999, during a Serie A match against Lecce, Ronaldo felt his knee buckle and was forced to limp off the pitch. Medical exams after the match confirmed that the striker had ruptured a tendon in his right knee and would require surgery. During his first comeback on April 12, 2000, he played only seven minutes during the first leg of the Coppa Italia final against Lazio before injuring his knee for a second time.
After two operations and 36 months of rehabilitation, Ronaldo came back for the 2002 World Cup, helping Brazil win their fifth World Cup title. Later in 2002 he won the World Player of the Year award for the third time, and transferred from Inter to Real Madrid. He played 100 games and scored 59 goals for nerazzurri.
Real Madrid
He was sidelined through injury until October 2002 but the fans kept on chanting his name. Ronaldo scored twice in his debut for Real Madrid. That same reception was observed on the night of the final game of the season against Athletic Bilbao, where Ronaldo scored again to seal his first season with 23 league goals and the La Liga Championship title for 2003, which Ronaldo had previously failed to win while with Barcelona. With Real he also won a Intercontinental Cup in 2002 and Spanish Super Cup in 2003.
Milan
On 18 January 2007, it was reported that Ronaldo agreed terms with Milan for a transfer of about €7.5 million. Ronaldo was forced to pay for the remaining period on his contract which tied him to Real Madrid, only because the latter did not agree to release him, while Milan were not ready to pay such a sum. On Thursday, January 25 Ronaldo flew from Madrid to Milan to watch Milan in a cup tie against Roma. Statements on the club's website said that Ronaldo was in Milan for a medical, and that a meeting had been arranged for Monday with Real Madrid officials to discuss and finalize his transfer to Milan. On 26 January, Ronaldo successfully completed his medical tests at the Milanello training complex under the supervision of club doctors, and the transfer completed on January 30 and got the jersey number 99. He made his debut as a substitute for Milan on 11 February 2007, during the 2-1 victory over Livorno. The next game at Siena on 17 February 2007, Ronaldo scored twice and assisted on a third goal in his first start for Milan as they won an exciting game 4-3. In his first season at Milan, Ronaldo scored 7 goals in 14 appearances.
After his move to Milan, Ronaldo joined the list of the few players to have played for both Internazionale and Milan in the Milan Derby and is the only player to have scored for both sides in the derby game (for Inter in the 98/99 season and for Milan in the 06/07 season). Ronaldo is also one of the few players to have started for Real Madrid and Barcelona, which also boasts a heated rivalry. However, Ronaldo has never transferred directly between the teams in the derby. Ronaldo only played 300-plus minutes for Milan in his single season at Milan due to recurring injury problems and weight issues. Ronaldo's only goals in the 2007/2008 season, besides his goal against Lecce in pre-season, came in a 5-2 victory against Napoli at the San Siro, where he scored an emotional brace. It was also the first time Milan's much hyped attacking trio of Kaká, Alexandre Pato and Ronaldo, known as Ka-Pa-Ro played together. In total he scored 9 goals in 20 appearances for Milan.
Despite tremendous success over the past decade, Ronaldo has never won the UEFA Champions League in his club career. During the 2006-07 season, though Milan won the 2006-07 title, Ronaldo was cup-tied with Madrid and ineligible to take part. The closest that he has been was in 2003 when he helped Real Madrid to the semi-finals, in which they lost to Juventus.
On 13 February 2008, Ronaldo suffered a severe season-ending knee injury while jumping for a cross in Milan's 1-1 draw with Livorno, and was stretchered off and taken to a hospital. Milan confirmed after the match that Ronaldo had ruptured the kneecap ligament in his left knee. It marked the third such occurrence of this injury, which he suffered twice to his right knee in 1998 and 2000. He was released by Milan at the end of the season, as his contract expired and was not renewed.
Corinthians
Ronaldo trained with Flamengo during his recovery from knee surgery, and the club's board of directors said that the doors were open for him to join. However, on 9 December, Ronaldo signed a one-year deal with Flamengo's league rival Corinthians. The announcement received high publicity in the Brazilian press about his favouring Corinthians over Flamengo, since Ronaldo publicly declared himself a Flamengo lover and had promised to defend the club. Ronaldo played his first match for Corinthians on 4 March 2009, a Copa do Brasil match against Itumbiara at Estádio Juscelino Kubitschek, in which he came as a substitute for Jorge Henrique. Ronaldo scored his first goal for Corinthians on March 8, 2009, in a Campeonato Paulista match against Palmeiras.
International career
Ronaldo made his international debut for Brazil in 1994, in a friendly match in Recife against Argentina. He went to the 1994 FIFA World Cup in USA as a 17-year-old but did not play. He came to be known as Ronaldinho, since Ronaldo Rodrigues de Jesus, his older team-mate on the tournament, was also called Ronaldo (and nicknamed Ronaldão to further distinguish them). Another Brazilian player, Ronaldo de Assis Moreira, who is widely known as Ronaldinho, would come to be called Ronaldinho Gaúcho when he joined the Brazilian main national team in 1999.
In the 1996 Olympic Games in Atlanta, Ronaldo played with the name Ronaldinho ("little Ronaldo" in Portuguese) on his shirt, since centre back Ronaldo Guiaro, two years his senior, was one of his teammates. Brazil went on to win the bronze medal in Atlanta.
Voted the FIFA World Player of the Year in 1996 and 1997, he scored four goals and made three assists during the 1998 FIFA World Cup. The night before the final, he suffered a convulsive fit. He was initially removed from the starting lineup 72 minutes before the match but he requested to play and was later reinstated by coach Mario Zagallo. Ronaldo did not perform well and he was injured in a collision with French goalkeeper Fabien Barthez. Brazil lost the final to hosts France 3-0.
Adrian Williams, professor of clinical neurology at Birmingham University, said that Ronaldo should not have played, saying that he would have been feeling the after effects of the seizure and that "there is no way that he would have been able to perform to the best of his ability within 24 hours of his first fit -- if it was his first fit."
Ronaldo won the Golden Shoe as the top scorer in the 2002 FIFA World Cup with eight goals. He scored against every team he came up against except England in the quarter finals and scored two in the final against Germany, helping Brazil win their fifth World Cup title. He also equaled Pelé's Brazilian record of 12 World Cup goals, adding to the four he scored in the 1998 tournament.
On 2 June 2004, Ronaldo scored a hat-trick of penalties for Brazil against archrivals Argentina in a CONMEBOL qualifier for the 2006 World Cup.
In the 2006 FIFA World Cup, although Brazil won their first two group games against Croatia and Australia, respectively, Ronaldo was repeatedly jeered for being overweight and slow. (Brazil President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva questioned the national coach asking if, "Ronaldo is fat or isn't he?"). Nonetheless, coach Carlos Alberto Parreira kept him in the starting lineup in face of calls to have Ronaldo replaced. With his two goals against Japan in the 2006 FIFA World Cup, he became the 20th player ever to score in three different FIFA World Cups. Ronaldo scored in the 1998, 2002 and 2006 World Cups. On June 27, 2006, he broke the all-time World Cup Finals scoring record of 14, held by Gerd Müller after scoring his 15th World Cup goal against Ghana in the 2006 FIFA World Cup Round of 16. He also equaled a much less talked about mark: with his third goal of the 2006 World Cup, Ronaldo became only the second player ever (Jürgen Klinsmann being the other) to score at least three goals in each of three World Cups. However, Brazil were knocked out by France 1-0 in the quarter-finals.
The fallout after Brazil's disappointing performance in the World Cup saw Brazil appoint former captain Dunga as manager. His attempt to end the star culture of the Brazilian national team saw him drop Ronaldo not only from the starting line-up but from the squad altogether. He hasn't been selected since. He is fifteen goals away from becoming Brazil's all-time top-scorer.
Ronaldo has played down spectulation of a national team return since his move to Corinthians, insisting that recovering from his injury was the most important thing. However, he has not hidden his desire to play at the 2010 World Cup in South Africa.
Personal life
In April 1999, Ronaldo married female Brazilian footballer Milene Domingues after he saw her playing on television and proposed to her. The marriage lasted four years and ended in divorce. The couple had a son, Ronald (born on April 6 2000, in Milan). In 2005, Ronaldo got engaged to Brazilian model and MTV VJ Daniela Cicarelli, who became pregnant but suffered a miscarriage; their relationship lasted 3 months after their engagement. He ended a relationship with Brazilian supermodel Raica Oliveira in December 2006.
In 2008 the player was caught in the middle of a sex scandal with three transvestites he met in a nightclub in Rio de Janeiro. Ronaldo told the police that he knew they were prostitutes, but he didn’t know they were men, offering them $600 to leave.
However, one of the three prostitutes, André Luís Ribeiro Albertino (better known as Andréia Albertini), demanded $30,000 and exposed the case to the media, claiming the player also asked them to buy him cocaine. Andre said that Ronaldo took the drugs, and even saved a receipt from his purchase of the three prostitutes.
According to the local police chief: "He was very excited and wanted to go out and have fun, without the press knowing. Ronaldo said he is not good in the head and that he is going through psychological problems because of his recent surgery. But he committed no crime at all, it was immoral at best."
Later, Ronaldo got engaged to Maria Beatriz Antony. They had a daughter named Maria Sophia (born in Rio de Janeiro, on December 24 2008).
Since 2005, Ronaldo has been the co-owner of A1 Team Brazil, alongside Brazilian motorsports legend Emerson Fittipaldi. The team participates in the A1 Grand Prix series, with Nelson Piquet, Jr., Tony Kanaan and João Paulo Oliveira as drivers for the debut season. Ronaldo's brand of Nike football boots the R9s are popular limited editions and are available in sports wear shops.
Popular culture
In 1997, Ronaldo acted briefly in the Brazilian TV series Malhação. During this acting job, he met the actress Susana Werner. Although never getting married, they became a long-term couple and lived together in Milan until the beginning of 1999.
Ronaldo also appeared on The Simpsons in the episode "Marge Gamer", where Lisa and Homer were arguing that Lisa dived on purpose in a soccer game. Ronaldo, portrayed as traveling via backflips and intent on exposing floppers, came in and said that she did in fact dive. Upon her receiving a red card he proudly exclaimed "Another family broken up by Ronaldo! Yes!"
Statistics
Correct as of March 8, 2009
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|1993-94||Cruzeiro||Série A||32*||34*||5||1||12||10||49||45
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|1994-95||rowspan="2"|PSV||rowspan="2"|Eredivisie||32||30||1||2||2||3||36||35
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|1995-96||13||12||3||2||5||6||21||20
|-
|1996-97||Barcelona||La Liga||37||34||5||8||7||5||49||47
|-
|1997-98||rowspan="5"|Internazionale||rowspan="5"|Serie A||32||25||4||3||11||6||47||34
|-
|1998-99||19||14||3||0||6||1||28||15
|-
|1999-00||7||3||1||0||0||0||8||3
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|2000-01||0||0||0||0||0||0||0||0
|-
|2001-02||10||7||1||0||5||0||16||7
|-
|2002-03||rowspan="5"|Real Madrid||rowspan="5"|La Liga||31||23||1||0||12||7||44||30
|-
|2003-04||32||24||7||3||9||4||48||31
|-
|2004-05||34||21||1||0||10||3||45||24
|-
|2005-06||23||14||2||1||2||0||27||15
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|2006-07||7||1||2||1||4||2||13||4
|-
|2006-07||rowspan="2"|Milan||rowspan="2"|Serie A||14||7||0||0||0||0||14||7
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|2007-08||6||2||0||0||0||0||6||2
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|-
|2009||Corinthians||Serie A||1||1||1||-||-||-||2||1
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33||35||6||1||12||10||50||46
46||42||4||4||7||9||57||55
164||117||18||13||44||21||226||151
88||58||9||3||22||7||119||68
330||251||36||21||85||47||451||319
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* includes 18 matches and 22 goals in Campeonato Mineiro.
- " Cup " include domestic cups and supercups,
- " Continental " includes European cups, South American cups and Intercontinental Cup.
PROFESSIONAL CAREER TOTALS:
- Clubs : 452 matches / 320 goals
- National Team : 97 matches / 62 goals
- U - 23 National Team : 8 matches / 6 goals
TOTAL : 557 MATCHES / 388 GOALS
Honours
Cruzeiro
PSV
Barcelona
Internazionale
Real Madrid
National team
Individual
External links
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