The Last Goodbye: When Ronaldo Fenomeno went to Corinthians and stole Pele's crown

Signing Ronaldo Fenomeno was once an opportunity that the best clubs in the world battled to seize. As the third millennium approached, the boy who left Brazil to conquer the world and won was the brightest piece of football's treasure chest of attacking gems.

But in December 2008, hiring the services of the wild-toothed former golden boy was about as safe as buying shares in an Icelandic investment bank - especially for a Brazilian club emerging from one of the most trying episodes of its wildly eventful history.

In a way, however, it is the story of the Brazilian club that took that risk – Corinthians – andit is a glorious success story.< /p>

Ronaldo was only 32 when Corinthians moved for him. But his age said nothing about his past. Once the greatest footballer in the world, o Fenomeno had been brought to his knees by… well, his knees, which in the late 2000s were held together with blu tack, tape and prayers.

At his former club AC Milan, Ronaldo only played 20 games in 18 months. His last came in February 2008. He left the field clutching his left kneecap and crying in pain.

While at Milan, he was also diagnosed with hyperthyroidism, which explained his significant weight gain, and was involved in an off-pitch scandal in Brazil.

Yet he was a free agent and he was still Ronaldo. In fact, let's try again. He was still Ronaldo.

And since he was still Ronaldo, the temptation was there, because of the hope that he could rekindle that old fire, but also, because of the deafening noise his arrival would generate. If we recreated this scene in cartoon form, Brazilian club marketing chiefs would have dollar signs rolling in their eyes.

So there was potential reward, but there was a lot of risk. On the one hand, Ronaldo the name, which guaranteed to make noise. On the other, Ronaldo, the fragile and overweight footballer, who guaranteed nothing.

Of all the clubs to make a crazy gamble at the end of 2008, Brazilian giants Corinthians should also have made the bottom of the list. Their fingers were badly burned.

In 2005, then-president Alberto Duib decided to let Media Sports Investment — a sleazy company backed by Russian oligarch Boris Berezovsky and headed by budding superagent Kia Joorabchian — take over the business club transfer.

MSI had brought the promise of riches and taken with them budding talents like Carlos Tevez and Javier Mascherano. At first it was bliss, with the club winning the Brazilian title in 2005.

But, inevitably, MSI had jumped ship at the first sign of a storm and the SS Corinthians sank like a stone. In 2007 Corinthians, one of the biggest clubs in the country with 30 million fans, were relegated to Serie B.

In 2008, they regrouped, winning the second tier and reaching the Copa do Brasil final. But a newly promoted team would be averse to taking risks, right?

• • • •

READ: Making O Fenomeno in Brazil: 'It felt like it came from the moon'

• • • •

The answer was a resounding no. After all, this is Brazilian football, where the assessment of financial risk is about as far from the minds of most club presidents as Taipei is from Timbuktu.

The new manager of Corinthians was Andres Sanchez. He had done well to stabilize the club and put them back in place so easily. But deep down, Sanchez is a fan of the brash and the bold, a man who loves the spotlight. It was the perfect opportunity.

Ronaldo trained at Flamengo, the Rio club he supported as a child. He had been there for four months, keeping fit and hoping. "I was sure I would play [for Flamengo]," he told Flow Podcast in 2021. "[But] they didn't do anything."

Ronaldo continued, "One day I went to an awards show in Rio de Janeiro, and I ran into Andres [Sanchez]…Andres had already started putting the pieces together, recruiting [ the ancient nation of Brazil...