Ronaldo and Real Valladolid: with the magic gone, all that’s left is a crisis | Sid Lowe

At the end of training on Friday, as Real Valladolid’s players left the annex next to the José Zorrilla stadium and headed off under grey skies, rain preparing to roll in, a surprise waited for them. It was the final session before the weekend their coach said would show what hopes they had, an opportunity not so much to save their season as still have one, and there was he was: the Original Ronaldo, in the flesh. He came to encourage them, he said, going round the dressing room reminding them what it means to be committed, always. “Thank you for accompanying the team before the Valencia game!” the club tweeted, exclamation included. The Brazilian, after all, is one of the greatest footballers ever.

He is also their owner and president. But still this was unexpected: they hadn’t seen him for months and didn’t think they would see him now either. He had been in the directors’ box for Valladolid’s first game of the season, which they had won, and when they played Real Madrid at the Bernabéu the following week too, which they hadn’t. Since then, as they watched their team slide towards the second division, abandoned to an increasingly inevitable fate, he hadn’t been back. “Where is the president?” supporters had sung. One day in November, while they were playing Getafe, he was playing tennis. They knew that because he had broadcast it on Twitch. So the following week, they set up a game in the stands, giant foam rackets hitting a ball back and forth.

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Mostly, they have sung for him to “go home”, when he already was. He had been at the derby in the Champions League in midweek, making that as many Real Madrid matches as Valladolid games he has been to this season, and more at the Bernabéu than at the Zorrilla. He had better things to do. Like joining Kaká on court. And becoming president of his country’s FA, because he had done such a good job with his club. And, well, just about anything else, because actually being with his team isn’t much fun. But then suddenly on Friday there he was, telling them all about commitment and sacrifice, the demands, the pride and honour needed to defend a historic shirt: “The only way to compete in the top flight,” as the club’s communique had it.

Bottom of the table, time slipping away and the abyss opening beneath them, they had to try something. Maybe they thought this was like that time Rodrygo touching Ronaldo’s legs, hoping that some of his magic would rub off on them. The following afternoon Valladolid faced Valencia, the last of the teams in the relegation zone, safety eight points away. They had not won in eight but perhaps here was an opportunity, something to cling to, however precarious. “The situation is critical for both of us; the result will show us what chances we have,” head coach Álvaro Rubio said. Ronaldo had come to tell them how important it was.

And then he hopped in his car and headed home, 150km south.

Maybe he watched on telly but the next day Ronaldo – like Peter Lim’s son Kim Liat, Valencia’s new president – wasn’t at Mestalla to see his side lose for the 19th time this season. He wasn’t there to see them concede after seven minutes, to see them handed a lifeline just before half-time, Giorgi Mamardashvili gifting Juanmi Latasa an equaliser, or to see them let go again. Or to console Raúl Moro as he sobbed at full time. He wasn’t on hand to head to the dressing room and remind them of their obligations, not this time, nor to face the yellow flags high in the stands as his team slipped 11 points adrift, as good as gone with 11 games left.

Beaten 2-1 thanks to Umar Sadiq’s winner, this was Valladolid’s seventh defeat in eight, a single point secured from the last 24 available. “Their second goal killed us,” Latasa said, but it has been over for weeks. For the first time in 20 games, when the whistle went Valencia had pulled out of the relegation zone; Valladolid had become resigned to the probability that they never will.

It wasn’t supposed to be this way. When Ronaldo bought a 50% share in the club for €30m in 2018 – a share he increased to 82% last summer – he said that the “normal” outcome was that they would be “in the Champions League in five seasons”. To begin with there really was a buzz about the place, an energy. And if the players weren’t as good as he was – he tells the story of telling Keko Gontan how to stay cool in front of goal, only for the striker to shoot back “but you’re Il Fenomeno” – he enjoyed spending time with them, being part of it all. That early enthusiasm, though, has long gone, and so mostly has he.

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The enthusiasm has given way to crisis, the fracture widening. There have been confrontations with local politicians, protests against the owner, the board and the sporting director, anger directed at players too. “We know it’s hard, we know the situation is screwed up,” defender Luis Pérez said after he was abused a few weeks ago. “The situation off the pitch doesn’t help: when the fans are against their own players it’s even harder. It can’t get worse for me so I can say it loud and clear: I get insulted by them when all I want is the same as them, to survive.”

Mostly there has been a feeling of abandonment which made his appearance on Thursday all the more unexpected. Ronaldo’s right-hand men, David Espinar and Matthieu Fenaert, have left; when the new CEO took over in February, he said the task now was “to get our dignity back”. Ronaldo wants to sell, and not just because he can’t stand for the presidency of the Brazilian federation for as long as he is still the owner. But when potential buyers come they too find that he disappears; he, meanwhile, says that no one has matched his valuation.

Valladolid made a profit in sales – more than €40m over the last five years – but, fans ask, for what? And where has the money gone? This is a club in crisis, on the verge of a third relegation from La Liga in a row. Nineteenth in 2021, 18th in 2023, they are 20th now and few imagine another first division return. In the summer, 11 players departed and five arrived: four on loan, and Latasa for €2.5m, the striker who scored three league goals in his last two seasons. At promotion celebrations, their own coach, Paulo Pezzolano, led chants for his own sacking, echoing what he had heard all season and would hear again soon enough. He lasted until November, when he was axed after a 5-0 defeat by Atlético. That night many home fans had ironically applauded their own team’s errors and olé-d their opponents then walked out, gone before the fifth.

Rubio took over then and again when Diego Cocca was sacked in February, Valladolid’s second and fourth manager of the season. Cocca lasted eight games which felt like a long time; swiftly disillusioned, he had been asking to be sacked for a while, almost literally. They would need winter signings, he said, and if not he might not be around much longer: instead the window was marked more by the departures of Kike Pérez, Lucas Rosa and Juma Bah. Cocca won just one league game; he also oversaw Valladolid’s exit from the cup at the hands of third-tier Ourense. Pezzolano had lasted 15, winning two. Rubio had had five so far; there are 11 more to endure.

A few weeks ago, Anuar Tuhami, raised through the club’s youth system, called Valladolid a team “without soul”, broken and battered. “Right now, we lack everything: we’re going through a very hard time,” he said. Óscar Puente recently insisted: “In 56 years I haven’t seen a more ineffective Real Valladolid than this, a team with less quality, less confidence and less character, one as lost as this.” The former city mayor and now a government minister with whom Ronaldo has publicly fallen out, perhaps Puente would say that, but that doesn’t necessarily make him wrong.

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Sometimes beyond all the analysis, all the context, there’s something simple: Valladolid are just not very good, just not quite the real thing: they have a player called Grillitsch, which feels appropriate somehow. The worst side in primera, they have lost the most and won the least, conceded the most and scored the least too; they have lost more games away than anyone and more games at home too. They have only even led a game five times. No one has faced more shots. Their top scorer has three goals. Barcelona put seven past them, so did Athletic. Villarreal and Atlético scored five, Sevilla four.

Three of their four wins were against fellow relegation candidates, a hint of hope amid the mediocrity: 1-0 over Valencia, 3-2 at Alavés and 1-0 against Espanyol. But while this latest defeat was only 2-1, close compared to the 18 goals they had let in during February, and while they sent their president in the day before and goalkeeper up in the last minute, a glimpse of a drama that wasn’t really there, Saturday provided another portrait of their limitations – in fact, Diario de Valladolid called it a “triumph”, not getting battered is as a good as it gets for a team that’s like “a fighter whose only objective is not to see his teeth go flying”. So too did coach’s pre-match comments in which he reduced his tactical changes to “shaking the tree”. Just see what falls.

And what falls is Valladolid, as has sadly seemed likely from the start. “We came with all the hope in the world,” Latasa said. But now there is none, the magic gone.

Source: theguardian.com