Ronaldo Fenomeno's rise in Brazil: 'It was like he came from the moon'

On a warm spring afternoon at the Mineirao stadium in Belo Horizonte in November 1993, as Bahia's away game against Cruzeiro in the Campeonato Brasileiro drew to a close, Bahia goalkeeper Rodolfo Rodriguez knelt on the grass in his penalty area, placed the ball on the ground, put his hands on his head and looked up at the sky.

Rodriguez, an experienced Uruguayan international, had already conceded five. Having just saved his camp by a sixth, his gesture was a lamentation aimed at his fragile defense and an appeal to heaven's mercy.

However, as he threw the ball, there was one thing he hadn't considered. The 16-year-old boy standing a few feet behind him was not one to show mercy. This boy had one thing in mind and only one: to score goals. Rodriguez ducked, but the second the ball was unguarded had been long enough. The goalkeeper gripped the thin air; it was gone.

With two long sidesteps, the teenager in the dazzling blue shirt pinched himself. At first contact, he had removed it. With his second, he had stung him at the bottom of the empty net. Rodriguez got up and appealed for an imaginary infraction, but it was too late. The embarrassment had already been inflicted.

Menino Ronaldo, the soon to be Fenomeno kid, had scored his fifth of the afternoon and Cruzeiro's sixth.



"Ronaldo was a striker who always paid attention to everything, he never gave up," Rodriguez told Superesportes years later. Rodriguez found that out the hard way, and with Ronaldo's gutting performance in that game, Brazil woke up too.

The next day, Belo Horizonte newspapers featured the smiling, buck-toothed teenager on their front and back covers and on several pages in between. In Hoje em Dia, the headline read: “Brasil se curva aos pes do Ronaldo” – “Brazil bows at the feet of Ronaldo”.

Later that month, the teenage striker was called up to the Brazil squad for the very first time. The following year, he won his first senior club silverware, was part of the Brazil squad that won the World Cup in Pasadena and earned himself a big transfer to PSV Eindhoven. But that game against Bahia is etched in the Brazilian collective consciousness as Ronaldo announced himself as a superstar of the future.

The rise was dizzying, the time between anonymity and national fame flew by as Ronaldo flew past defenders with the ball at his feet. Ronaldo had only really taken his first step towards becoming a professional footballer three years before scoring five against Bahia in front of several thousand people on the pitch and many more on TV.

Ronaldo has always walked the streets of Rio de Janeiro with a ball at his feet, and from the age of 12 he played for a futsal team called Clube Social Ramos. In his first season with the club, he took the local league by storm, scoring a record 166 goals.

But he hadn't played organized football at 11 until he was 14, when he and his friend Alexandre Calango were welcomed by Sao Cristovao, a club in the Rio de Janeiro neighborhood of the same name.

Located in the north of the city, the Sao Cristovao Stadium is just a 20-minute walk from the iconic Maracana. Yet it lacks any glamour. Sao Cristovao now plays in the lower parts of the Rio de Janeiro state league system and in recent years has teetered on the brink of bankruptcy.

When Ronaldo joined in 1990, they were in a better position, playing in the state league top flight, but they weren't giants of the Rio football scene at all.

It is important to note that the club's facilities were located relatively close to Ronaldo's family home in Rio's working-class suburb of Bento Ribeiro, and Sao Cristovao's coaches and managers were ready to lend him support he needed, an offer that was not forthcoming from the biggest clubs in which Ronaldo had had trials.

Alfredo Sampaio was Sao Cristovao's Under-17 coach when Ronaldo started playing for the Under-15s and remembers his arrival well. "He was being watched by Flamengo," Sampaio says, "but he had a lot of financial difficulties. He didn't have money to go to training [on the bus] and Flamengo didn't offer to help. That's why he stayed with us."

A Sao Cristovao manager named Ary de Sa - the same man who made the deal with Clube Social Ramos to give some of their futsal players a chance to play on grass - provided a little financial aid to Ronaldo and his family, as he has done to others...