This week it was Cristiano Ronaldo’s turn to find a little more public attention than usual focussed on some previously overlooked aspect of his physique. With Ronaldo these days it’s all about his neck. And make no mistake, it is one of the great necks: a rippling, flaring, cobra-like thing, broad enough to resemble an auxiliary set of shoulders, and which, when fully extended, has the dual effect of making his head look touchingly small on top of that perma-bronzed pyramid of muscle.
It has been a significant week for Ronaldo generally. The last two days have brought further talk of a return to English football, with a suggestion Manchester United are prepared to pay the required £160m in fees and wages to bring him back. Before that there was simply further confirmation of Ronaldo’s magisterial early-season form, pegged out around a pair of unforgettable neck-wrenching headed goals: on Tuesday a classical leaping downward bullet against Elche; and before that an astonishing goal against Deportivo La Coruña, which involved not just hanging in the air, but seeming to ratchet himself a few notches higher halfway through the ball’s flight, corkscrew his great musclebound neck through 180 degrees and finally twang the ball into the top corner with a decisive flex of the eyebrow.
If it seems a little perverse to dwell on Ronaldo’s neck at a moment like this – a phenomenon one Guardian reader has already suggested might be the product of over-use of the facial exercise device Ronaldo advertises in Japan – then bear with me for a moment. As he surges towards his 30th birthday in the grip of another insatiable run of goalscoring form that ripped and toned girdle of neck muscle is perhaps the most viviparous clue to his enduring success, a rather touching emblem of a hard-won, minutely engineered physicality that is key to the age of Ronaldo-ism.
And what a run of form it is too. Those numbers again just for the sweaty, fleshy thrill of it: so far this season Ronaldo has nine goals for Real Madrid in four La Liga matches. His last 51 club goals have come in 41 matches going back to October last year, a period that includes a title run-in and the knockout stages of the Champions League. Overall he has 186 goals in 169 La Liga games. Lionel Messi is ahead overall with 245 in 281, but somehow this seems not to matter that much any more. Indeed for the first time since the start of this epic two-hander it is now possible to talk about how good Ronaldo is without having to mention Messi at all. Both players have evolved in recent years. Messi is in a process of retreat from his most explosive period, the acceleration dimmed a little, the relentless, rubbery quality of his youth run its course. He plays deeper now, a brilliantly high grade No10; still great, just perhaps not quite as great. Whereas Ronaldo remains a phenomenon, speed, torque, flex, snap all still gleamingly intact. And for now at least, that battle is over. This Ronaldo is better than this Messi. And for the first time Ronaldo is unarguably the best in the world.
He has also evolved tactically, but into something more not less concentrated, that sheer unrelenting physicality now enshrined as his defining single quality. In this Madrid team Ronaldo no longer needs to stand there twitching over the ball, or even particularly bother to dribble past people, instead moving about the pitch in his own discreetly sealed pocket of air, evading opponents with a regal swerve, like royalty pestered by an unusually insistent under-gardner.
It is always tempting to see wider trends in whoever happens to be top of the pile at that moment . Not so long ago Barcelona’s collection of bouncy little velcro-touch skill goblins looked like a vision of the future, and three years on there is a sense a different, more physically explosive kind of attacking player having a moment. In recent weeks Thomas Muller has out jumped and overpowered Scotland’s defence. Borussia Dortmund simply ran Arsenal off the ball at Signal Park. Julian Draxler looked a brilliantly explosive 6ft 2in telescopically gifted No10 when Schalke came to Stamford Bridge.
If Ronaldo is in this company king of the forward-bruisers, it is only that lingering popularity-gap that remains something of a puzzle. Personally I suspect the affection-deficit has something to do with his – at rimes hilarious – sense of contradiction: the Terminator-like physique, and the rather fragile, boyish air, that small, often tearful face balanced on top of that curtain of annihilating neck muscle. There is still a touching residue of nerdiness in him, of the gangly kid from Funchal with the bad teeth and the big ideas and the obsessional line in self-improvement.
Four weeks from now La Liga will stage its first clásico of the season, presenting in the process a ridiculously starry concentration of attacking talent. For Ronaldo it might yet end up a crowning moment for a player who adds a sheen of something redemptive and grand even to this ridiculous Real Madrid, a champion team that might have been hurled together by a billionaire toddler.
In this context it isn’t hard to see why United would want him back. Signing the best player in the world appears to be more important right now – and more brand savvy – than signing the players your team might actually need. Plus his return would be a huge event in itself for a high-end league deprived of high-end stars. Not to mention a chance to enjoy in his rarified prime – and maybe even, who knows, learn to love a little more – this enduring, self-made, neck-flaring wonder of the modern age.
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