Cristiano Ronaldo: Football's first billionaire player
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What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
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It's 2009, a cold January morning. A 23-year-old grips the wheel of a two-day-old $300,000 Ferrari. Overhead, aeroplanes are coming into land at Manchester Airport.
He zooms down into a tunnel and then he smashes into the wall. The front of his sports car crumples and the windscreen smashes.
He gets out of the car, his tall body ripped with muscles. The car is totaled, but he's OK, with barely a hair out of place on his perfectly quaffed head.
What was Cristiano Ronaldo's early life like in Madeira?
He jumps into a Bentley that was following right behind him. There's no time to lose. He has to be on the pitch within the hour.
Because this footballer never misses training and it's his dedication, obsession, some would say, that will make him a billionaire.
MUSIC Welcome to Good Bad Billionaire from the BBC World Service. Every episode, we pick a billionaire and we find out how they made their money.
We take them from zero to their first million and then from a million on to a billion. My name is Zing Zing and I'm a journalist, author and podcaster. And I'm Simon Jack. I'm the BBC's business editor.
And on this episode, we've got a billionaire who is actually the subject of several requests from listeners.
Yeah, a few of you have requested this one, including Mark, who emailed to say, I just wanted to say how much I enjoy listening to the podcast. Thank you, Mark. It's consistently interesting, well-researched and very engaging. As a suggestion for a future episode, I'd love to hear the story of Cristiano Ronaldo. He's a slightly different kind of billionaire, a genuine rags to riches story. Be fascinating to see him through the good, bad or just another billionaire lens. He said, I really think it will be kind of tough. Interesting.
Well, if you're a football fan, whether he's good or bad probably depends on whether he's playing for your side or not.
Yeah.
I mean, the closest I can come to describing it as someone who doesn't watch a tons of football. It's like it's like watching someone dance ballet next to someone who can't dance at all.
Yeah. No, he's he had very fleet of foot for sure. He's got dozens of world records, including the most goals scored in international football, 968 at the time of recording, and the most international caps, 226 for his home country of Portugal.
Now 41 years old, he was declared a billionaire just last year worth $1.4 billion.
Now that puts him in a very elite club of billionaire athletes, which you can actually count on your fingers. By many metrics, he's the most famous athlete, some would say, in the world. I'm sure Lionel Messi might have something to say about that.
Well, Ronaldo is also regularly described as arrogant, as narcissistic, and his behaviour, both on and off the pitch, is very rarely out of the headlines. So let's try to answer Mark's question. And to do that, we'll have to go back to the beginning of Ronaldo's story.
MUSIC
Cristiano Ronaldo dos Santos Evero was born in 1985 in Madeira, a small Portuguese island out in the Atlantic Ocean. His mother, Dolores, was a cook and a cleaner. His father, Denis, worked as a municipal gardener.
Denis had been a soldier at war and he struggled with depression and alcoholism. Ronaldo was their fourth child and he was an accident. His mother actually considered having an abortion and she's Catholic and very religious, which just goes to show that they were in pretty dire straits at the time. He was raised in poverty. And Ronaldo has said, I was brought up with nothing.
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Chapters
5 chapters
1
What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
0:00–1:26
2
What was Cristiano Ronaldo's early life like in Madeira?
1:26–20:22
3
How did Ronaldo's career begin at Sporting CP?
20:22–25:28
4
What challenges did Ronaldo face during his teenage years?
25:28–37:41
5
How did Ronaldo transition from Manchester United to Real Madrid?
37:41–46:26