Too famous to play football? Ronaldo has outgrown the sport that made him | Euro 2024

TThere was something unsettling about the man who, half an hour after working full-time at BVB Stadium Dortmund on Saturday evening, was grabbed, pushed and dragged away by security guards onto the concrete causeway beneath the management boxes.

First of all, the man seemed unusually well-groomed, with dazzling earrings, wearing a full-shiny Portuguese tracksuit. He also beamed relentlessly, shouting things like Big Love and Say Hi to Georgina, making the heart gesture with these hands, even as three men in hi-vis jackets grabbed his elbows.

Could he be a player? A lost team member? When I looked closer, there was something inauthentic and feeble about his take on the handsome, cool young footballer look, the muscle definition not quite there, jewelry not believable. The entire tableau was watched by its own dedicated group of spectators. Who is he, we asked. The spectators shrugged. He is Cristiano Ronaldo.

What the stadium's guards were grappling with at that moment was a deeply postmodern event. Here we had a Cristiano Ronaldo lookalike, or Cristiano Ronaldo cosplayer, trying to break the fourth wall, to intersect with the actual components of Cristiano Ronaldo's real life, entourage, bouncers, family.

Perhaps the strangest thing was that this hardly seemed strange in this context. Being a Ronaldo lookalike is a legitimate career path, judging by the sheer number of them on the internet and newspaper stories about the latest AWESOME CR7 LOOKALIKE over footage of a hair-gelled youngster making a Siuuu gesture in a Turkish shopping

A remarkable aspect of this culture is that the lookalike will always arouse shock and wonder, a sense of devotional awe, as if this were a modern version of the medieval trade in holy relics, the collarbone of Jesus Christ, the dentures of John the Baptist. Six people invaded the field in Dortmund to steal a selfie. Cristiano Ronaldo's abs have appeared in honeydew melon in Manila. We thank you CR7 for this content.

In Dortmund, Ronaldo's private box was less of a distraction during Portugal's 3-0 defeat to Turkey and more of a competitive entertainment event. The heads were stretched, the necks were extended. Rumors circulated that a glimpse had been made of YouTuber IShowSpeed, an amiable court jester who clings to very famous people (I'm with Vigh-Ratt Kohli here!) and who has 25.4 million YouTube subscribers, more than the population of a medium-sized nation, Taiwan or Mali or Burkina Faso.

None of this is new to this tournament. It is a more developed version of a well-known phenomenon. But in Dortmund things felt more than a little out of control. The main takeaway from the pitch invasions is that this is clearly not well managed by UEFA and the host nation, who have been caught unprepared.

It shouldn't happen again. The field invaders are both annoying to watch and potentially dangerous. Ronaldo has more followers on Instagram than anyone else in the world. And the people of the world are unstable to a statistically significant degree. Today's abused lookalike is tomorrow's less controlled interaction.

Whose fault is this exactly? And who needs to adapt to deal with it? There is a sense that football has not yet really come to terms with the beautiful monster it has built here. Ronaldo is, at least by some standards, the most famous person in the world. This is a new development for the sport.

In a way, Ronaldo is now too famous to play football. Maybe now football will become one of those things that very famous footballers unfortunately can no longer do, like drinking coffee or walking around the block. Ronaldo may have to outsource it to his proxies and representatives. Maybe he can send a video message that can be played during the game.

This isn't entirely a joke. There are scale issues here. Ronaldo has 107 million more Having him there under normal football restrictions is like hosting a Taylor Swift concert, where Taylor is guarded by students and temporary workers in hi-vis jackets, where people can just run through and talk to her every few minutes.

A solution is needed for this practical problem. The relevant people will condemn UEFA, because UEFA is in charge and now it has to deal with it. UEFA could undoubtedly insist that Ronaldo provide his own comprehensive security, as Lionel Messi does in the MLS, where he has a taser-equipped team. This is in fact Ronaldo's own fault, a parallel career that is heavily monetised.

For the spectator, the fan, there was the sense of intrusion by things that are not sport, with the spectacle collapsing in the middle, a truly captivating Euro 2024 group match transformed into a celebrity event. In its own way, it was a new step for one of the biggest threats to the sport in its traditional form: the intrusion of fake into reality; the dilution of what is left of pure competition by entertainment products.

It's important to note that none of this is really Ronaldo's fault. He is truly one of the greatest players of all time. He is hard-nosed, a purist, the perfect professional. He is still good enough to play in the Portuguese team and might even help them win this European Championship. Compare his impact so far with that of Harry Kane, another less mobile number 9.

Ronaldo's fame is also a natural channel for a transformation that comes from many places. From the US, where the largest consumer economy is finally entering the world's biggest game. Of nation states using sport as a means to promote their own soft power.

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It is there in Chelsea where a Premier League match is staged as actors brush their teeth in the crowd to promote a film, in the increasingly secretive elite leagues. It is present in the new phenomenon of amplified celebrity content, household names shouting at the players for private clicks, a dialogue taking place above the heads of a rapt and passive fan-following audience.

And in Dortmund, the invasion of entertainment products into sports was present in its simplest form, expressed through the medium of individual Ronaldo consumers literally interrupting the game to generate a celebrity moment.

Why is it so moving to see this happening in real time? Partly because, despite all the continued Ronald-ification of the sports world, it's still difficult to answer the fundamental question of why exactly he's so popular. Or even whether he is actually popular, loved and cherished; or just very famous, at a time when fame itself is something to be cherished. Why he? Why is he so far ahead of the rest?

The appeal of the base is obvious. Ronaldo is a great footballer. He scored goals for extremely powerful clubs. Plus, there's his story. He represents self-made success, an underdog story, a motivational story. Ronaldo has changed himself, perfected his body and dominated his own world. He represents the vast and brilliantly executed accumulation of wealth, not only being the highest paid player in the Euros with over 200 million a year, but also the highest paid player by miles (Kylian Mbapp is No. 2 with just 70 million). Andy Warhol said: Making money is art. Ronaldo is like a living installation. How to conquer this world.

He also just has that indefinable quality of the very famous one. What does he actually look like? A life-size statue of a wedding cake. A promising sub-captain of the intergalactic fleet. Anyone can be handsome. Ronaldo is strikingly handsome, handsome in a way that is always recognizable to him, an instant signifier of the Ronaldo feeling, a button you want to click.

It's also perfect for the internet. He illustrates his obsessions. Ronaldo is self-care, nurturing, physical obsession. Men in particular are desperate to follow something. Ronaldo is muscles, beauty, success, money. Who doesn't love those things? Ronaldo presents himself as a perfect avatar of all these obsessions. Consume it like Coca-Cola. Because all colas are the same and all colas are good.

Part of that is its fundamental, unknowable quality. People have always adored athletes. They worshiped Diego Maradona, but this seemed to have some basis in what Maradona represented: rebellion, mischief, flawed human genius and a very distinct sense of personality. What does Ronaldo actually believe in? In a time when everything is political, it seems remarkable that he actually avoids these categories.

This is of course not strictly true. Ronaldo supports regimes. He is currently lending his name and his weight to Saudi Arabia, a clearly political act. His entire public identity is also a hyper-endorsement of extreme consumerism, the iconography of images and possessions and surfaces.

On a more basic level, Ronaldo got there first. He colonized this world as it unfolded, to such an extent that it's very difficult to imagine how anyone else could achieve the same dominance of the football-social-media-corporate-worship mega-verse. There will be other stars. But no one can ever be Elvis again, because Elvis has already been Elvis. Ronaldo has occupied this space.

As a footballer he will continue to find himself between these two intersecting planes, pure sport and pure product, as is already happening in real time Germany. He remains the most powerful figure in modern sports history, an agent in his transformation into something else, flitting between these planes and producing his own competitive sound. Hopefully there will be no more moments of overlap for a while. Over to you, UEFA. Let's just talk about the football part for now.