A Nation’s Goal

A victorious Cristiano Ronaldo. (Photo: Karsten Stalpaert, https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/2.0/, via Flickr)

In football, you don’t have to look far to see the identities spectators wish to associate themselves with reflected in the visual delights of a match: hats, scarfs, badges are everywhere, distinguishing one set of supporters from another in a brilliant, clashing display. On the international stage, flags deck out the stadium, drenching the stands of supporters and the players themselves in their national colours. Understandably, the symbolic dimensions of sports have long been a concern of those interrogating how identity is projected onto, or is even produced, by sporting events. 

The most potent symbol of all is the player who represents the nation. Cristiano Ronaldo has not played club football in Portugal since 2003, when he was just 18 years old; he was not even born in mainland Portugal, but on the archipelago of Madeira, 1,000km southwest off the Portuguese coast. And yet he has become a point of reference for Portuguese culture all over the world. How has this come to be?

The most obvious answer? Success. A prolific goal-scorer who has played for several top clubs in Europe, he is a household name. At the age of 36, he has won 32 trophies, including two international tournaments with Portugal. His individual achievements are also many (five Ballon D’Or awards, four European Boots, record after record of most goals scored for teams and in competitions). We can understand why a nation might want to associate itself closely with him. It was not until his success with his national team, however, that he came to be fully embraced by the Portuguese. The negative media coverage he received focusing on his ego and overly-flamboyant style of play was rife, with many critiquing his high-flying lifestyle as a wealthy footballer that seemed a far cry from his modest upbringing in Madeira. However, since the Euro win of 2016, there is consensus: Ronaldo is the undisputed face of Portuguese football. Visit any Quora forum and you’ll see the vote is unanimous. This is not insignificant, given the huge popularity of football in Portugal. So, we might see the centrality of success and the national sport in this association of Ronaldo and Portugal as the stuff of nation-building. Who wouldn’t want to associate themselves with glory and determination through their most favoured pastime?

Portuguese fans at the Euros, 2016. (Photo: Gustave Deghilage, CC BY-NC-ND 4.0, via Flickr)

Ronaldo’s image has been institutionalised. In play, he has held the captaincy of the national team since July 2008 and is Portugal’s most-capped player of all time. Off the pitch, he is equally sedimented in Portuguese institutions. In 2014, President Aníbal Cavaco Silva gave him the title of Grande-Oficial no Ordem do Infante Dom Henrique (a Portuguese order of knighthood) to, in Cavaco Silva’s words, ‘distinguish an athlete of world renown who has been a symbol of Portugal globally’.  Likewise, after the Euros success of 2016, Madeira airport in Funchal was renamed after the player. However, this name change was controversial, with some politicians and citizens even starting a petition to reverse it due to it being ‘disproportionate and lacking justification’, and one signatory stating, ‘[a]t this rate, soon they will announce that Madeira is going to be called Ronaldo Island.’ 

Cavaco Silva’s decision to knight Ronaldo was a political one; in associating the nation and, by extension, his own government, with the figure of Ronaldo, he clearly hoped it would reflect kindly on his tenure. He is not alone in this. Sports stars have regularly been adopted by states and regimes to further their political interests (David Beckham OBE, Harry Kane MBE, and so on). It becomes apparent that while an individual player might be used as a symbol of national identity, there is a process of overwriting at work here, that might eradicate existing identities or empty them of meaning.

So while elements of his personality have been adopted by the nation, this might not tell us as much as we hope about Portugal. It’s apparent that this relationship has been closely constructed by governments and institutions. Equally telling is what has been obscured:  as was first reported by German publication Der Spiegel in 2017, Ronaldo is alleged to have raped Katryn Mayorga, an American woman, during a holiday in Las Vegas in 2009, an accusation he has denied vehemently. While the criminal case over the allegations was dropped in 2018, a civil case looking to overturn a $375,000 settlement is still ongoing. Those drawing close connections between Ronaldo and Portugal to reflect positively on their political vision are not the only ones guilty of silencing this facet of his public image. Many news outlets joyously described his return to the Premier League with superlatives galore – ‘a bolt of electricity’, ‘permanent smiles’, ‘the talent, the work ethic, the ego’.

So, it appears that a footballer’s close ties with constructions of national identity is a selective process; aspects of the individual’s character are endorsed or erased, depending on their nature. The image of success projected by Ronaldo is appealing to the nation state that wishes to make a claim at that success, its contribution being the soil on which the determination of the individual was grown. For the individual, it is the idea that they, too, having been born on that same soil, might achieve a similar feat. Yet, understandably, Ronaldo’s bad press seldom enters the discourse of these nationalist projects. We can assume, then, that the endorsement of a footballer doesn’t present us with a clear image of a national identity, but rather presents us with a way to understand how a nation wants to see itself reflected.