I arrived in Funchal on February 13th, 1985 — a week after a kid named Cristiano Ronaldo was born on that same island. I had just spent ten months on my mission in mainland Portugal and was thrilled to be sent to Madeira. I'd heard how special the island was, and I couldn't wait to see it for myself.
Is it possible I crossed his family's path at some point — in a grocery store, on the cobblestone streets, at a weekend market? Maybe. Maybe not. But somewhere on that small island, our timelines quietly overlapped, years before either of us had any idea what that would come to mean.
I didn't expect a kid from Madeira to turn my heart to a new allegiance. I was already a soccer fan by then — I'd spent four years in Brazil and lived through a World Cup there. I saw the heart of a nation rise up in a way I'd never seen before. Zico, Sócrates, Romário — my heroes were already set in stone. I didn't think there was room for anyone else.
Then, in 2003, I started hearing about a teenage phenom turning heads at Manchester United. Faster than a cat. Dribbling like nobody else. A confidence way beyond his years. Landon and I watched as many of his games as we could. He was brilliant and a little out of control back then — all flash, not much restraint. But he learned. He started dribbling less and passing more, became an expert at being in the box at exactly the right moment, and developed an uncanny ability to hang in the air and time a header like no one else. He leads all players in history with 153 header goals. They once studied him receiving corner kicks in the dark, and he still headed them in. His timing was, as the Brazilians say, "fora do comum" — out of the ordinary.
He moved to Real Madrid and did some real damage — hundreds of goals. I was hooked. I followed him from there on, watching not just the player but the man he was building around himself. He never followed the crowd of his contemporaries. He didn't drink. He didn't party. He started a family early and stayed devoted to it. He became known for a kind of seriousness about his craft that bordered on obsession — the work ethic, the discipline, the single-minded pursuit of being the best for his team, his country, and his own legacy. Confident? Absolutely. Hated by plenty of critics? Also, absolutely. But no one has been more clutch in the biggest moments — he has scored winning goals, often in the final minutes, in at least eleven matches that mattered most.
No one else has played in six World Cups. No one else has scored in six. For more than twenty years he carried Portugal on his back, hoping to finally deliver the one trophy that kept slipping away.
Today, Portugal fell to Spain, 1–0.
Today, he said goodbye.
It was hard to watch the emotion surface in his body as he walked the turf one last time, his face on the big screen for millions to see. What struck me most was the day before, when he was as calm as I've ever seen him. In his press conference, he carried a stoic confidence that he had already done all he could do. Win or lose, he said, it wouldn't matter — he had given everything.
*"It's about enjoying it as much as possible. This will be my last World Cup, but let's hope tomorrow isn't my last game. The day will come. But I'll be honest. Whatever happens tomorrow, Cristiano will leave with a clear conscience, not 100%, but 1,000%. Because I've given everything in football. I don't need it, I have a good life, but it's about passion. I play football because I love it… You have to enjoy every day. I've scored 3 goals in this World Cup, maybe I am not doing too badly?"*
That was the epitome of leaving nothing on the field.
Watching him afterward, I could sense this was his last chance to soak in a lifetime of showing up and giving everything to the game. Something rose up in me, too — I found myself wondering what must have been going through his mind, what he was feeling in that moment. It was bittersweet. A sense of loss: Portugal will never have a star quite like this again. We won't see another player like him. There are other greats, and that's a wonderful thing, but he is singular. And alongside the loss, I felt something like freedom — freedom for him. The media hasn't always been kind to him. He's carried plenty of critics along the way. But he wore that burden well, and that might be what I admire most about him — not the goals, but the way he handled the weight of being who he was, in public, for twenty years, without losing himself or his family in the process.
It makes me wonder if I am letting the hardships I face refine me or sour me.
*"I've scored 3 goals in this World Cup, maybe I am not doing too badly…?"*
I could say that about many things in my life. I raised four kids who all played soccer. I stayed married to Chelta for 36 years. Both had bumps along the way, but there were far more incredible "game days" than I could ever count — and when I think about what I'm leaving behind, what others will remember, I find myself asking the same question he did.
Maybe I am not doing too badly?
I didn't expect a World Cup match to affect me the way it did today. I didn't see it coming — the emotion, the sense of an era quietly closing. I found myself sitting with all of it, wondering why.
Upon more reflection, I think I finally know. It's not really about the goals, or the records, or even the football. It's that somewhere along the way, a kid from Madeira — born the same week I set foot on his island — became a kind of proof that discipline and passion, sustained over decades, still mean something. That you can carry a nation's hopes and a world's criticism and still come out the other side with, as he put it, a clear conscience.
Today wasn't just his last World Cup game. It felt, for a moment, like watching a small chapter of my own life close too.
The Portuguese have a word for what I'm feeling, one that never quite survives the trip into English: *saudade*. It isn't just nostalgia, and it isn't just longing. It's the ache of missing something — or someone — even while it's still right in front of you, because you already know it won't be there much longer and you may not see it again. I learned that word on the same island where he was born, long before I understood how much I'd feel it one day.
I have many saudades where CR7 is concerned. For the kid from Madeira. For the games he gave Landon and me to watch. For twenty years of a nation carried on one man's back.
Obrigado, Cristiano.
