Real risk in relying too much on Ronaldo

SOCCER:WITH A single phrase Jose Mourinho revealed just how important Cristiano Ronaldo is to his Real Madrid team. "The doctors say that he is not available (to face Tottenham)," he said, "but I might go over their heads." It is a risk, but one he is prepared to take – even though he knows it could end up with the critics turning on him. Important is not the half of it.

In truth it is a risk that has already been taken: Ronaldo has had muscular problems for a few weeks but has kept on playing every game, and virtually every minute too.

This is partly because of Mourinho’s need to have Ronaldo on the pitch and partly because of his desire to keep him happy. Locked in a battle for goals with Lionel Messi, Ronaldo, a fierce competitor by nature, is desperate to utilise every moment. Already struggling, he pulled up immediately after getting his third goal against Malaga – the seventh in a thumping 7-0 win. He then unexpectedly played against Atletico Madrid. A two-week lay-off followed; that was the last game he played.

The other risk is that in expressing his need to play Ronaldo even if he is not entirely ready, Mourinho has inadvertently downplayed the significance of other members in his squad and appeared publicly to load all his hopes on a single player. And everyone else appears to be doing so too.

Ronaldo is often implausibly brilliant – extraordinarily fast, powerful, skilful, strong in the air and a presence that is always threatening – and sometimes appears utterly unstoppable. Messi apart, he is La Liga’s outstanding performer. Yet he is not everything to Madrid, even if it often looks that way. As Alvaro Arbeloa says: “It can seem like he’s the only player here, he takes all the headlines, but there are other good players.”

Before his recent injury, Ronaldo was one of only two players to appear in every Madrid game this season. He has scored more than anyone else too: an astonishing 27 goals. The word they use is Ronaldodependencia and this weekend it made a comeback when, with Ronaldo unavailable, Madrid played poorly against Sporting Gijon and Mourinho lost his first home league match for nine years.

But Mourinho did not just complain about the absence of Ronaldo, he complained about the absence of all his creative players – Marcelo, Xabi Alonso and Karim Benzema, too. For all the focus on Ronaldo, perhaps “vital” was being wrongly applied to only one player. As one media commentator put it: “Madrid, who have learnt to live without Ronaldo, do not have a solution to living without Alonso or Marcelo.”

The pair were also missing when Madrid were knocked out of the Champions League last season.

For a while it appeared Ronaldodependencia had disappeared. Its flaw had been revealed: without him Madrid had performed admirably and very differently. Against Racing Santander, Madrid played their finest football of the season: more elaborate and more precise, with Mesut Ozil moving to centre-stage. The passing was shorter and sharper. Others took on greater responsibility.

With Ronaldo, the tendency is to look for him quickly and almost exclusively. His inclusion also affects the way opponents line up. Madrid play on the break; teams begin to wait for them, conscious of the danger Ronaldo poses if released behind them. He demands the ball and attacks invariably end with him. He dominates Madrid’s play, perhaps more than is necessary.

He has taken far more shots than any other player in the league this season. In 22 of his 26 league games he has hit more than five. Against Real Sociedad, astonishingly, Ronaldo had 15 shots in a 4-1 victory. Only one of his team-mates has ever had more than five shots in a match. That was Benzema against Santander, with six on the day Ronaldo was absent. He and Emmanuel Adebayor received fewer than half as many passes as Ronaldo had against Deportivo La Coruna in the previous game. The rest of the side found themselves more involved.

With so many goals and superb match-winning displays, Ronaldo can be forgiven. But his shooting has not always borne fruit. Against Deportivo, Ronaldo fired off eight shots but did not score, and nor did Madrid. Just as they did not score against Levante, Osasuna and Mallorca, against whom he took nine, eight and seven shots respectively.

Arbeloa last week described Spurs as a team with “many faces” who are completely different depending on the make-up of the starting XI. Something similar could be said of his own side. Ronaldo is the face of Madrid and often appears to be Madrid. But there is another Madrid out there too.

GuardianService