Cristiano Ronaldo sleeps in and skips breakfast on the million-dollar day—a day on which, to be tacky, he will make $1 million. (1) The day is crisp and bright, a sparkler, but Cristiano’s bedroom is dark until the electric blinds open wide like canal locks and the light floods into the room.
He gets to his feet, stretches, stands taller than his six feet one, and strolls down a hallway of eerie figurative paintings and passages to indoor swimming pools. He walks on his soles, but his posture gives the impression that he’s on his toes, rigid, a little bowlegged, like a guy at the gym who’s desperately in seek of shapelier calves. Everything about his body appears vacuum-sealed; one gets the impression that even his internal organs are slim-fit. When he reaches the bedroom of his 5-year-old son, Cristiano Jr., he says good morning (“Bom dia, Cris!”) before moving on to the bathroom, where he showers, cycles through his ablutions, reaches for the selectest few of the dozens of grooming products standing sentry on the counter, a forest of moisturizers.
1.Just about. He is the world’s highest-paid soccer player and the third-highest-paid athlete behind Floyd Mayweather Jr. and Manny Pacquiao. Forbes values his earnings at $80 million a year. In addition to his $20 million salary and his CR7 business lines, he has worked with brands like Nike, Armani, KFC, and TAG Heuer. Today is a TAG day—a day on which he will earn a fat hunk of his endorsement deal.
He considers his reflection in the mirror: It is a good-looking face. His torso has so many defined muscles it looks borrowed from the Bodies exhibition, muscles without skin. His legs are smooth and tanned to the hip—a result of yacht holidays and the notorious habit he has of rolling his soccer shorts up at practice like girls on a high school cross-country team.
He (2) is a professional soccer player, with the reigning claim to best in the world. (3) He is a winger on the Real Madrid football club, the king’s team, a sports entity that claims 450 million worldwide fans, one of the three or four best soccer squads on earth. He is the captain of the Portuguese national team. He is the most recognizable athlete in the world. (Ahead of LeBron James, Tiger Woods, Roger Federer, and Barcelona (4) “rival” Lionel Messi. (5)) He is a billboard fixture. He is namesake to his very own underwear line.
Practice with Real Madrid is in the afternoon, the first day back in mid-October from Cristiano’s qualifying with Portugal for the 2016 European Championship. Though practice is delayed, he still has a responsibility to Cristiano Jr. (6) With the exception of occasional visits from friends or drop-ins from Cristiano’s mother, Dolores, (7) it’s just the two of them alone in that sprawling modern house in the western suburbs of Madrid. Cristiano Jr. attends an American school five minutes away, just outside their gated community, and Cristiano Sr. likes to drive him when he can—likes to push beyond the Portuguese of the house and practice their Spanish and English in the car together.
Before training, Cristiano fixes himself lunch and eats in his dining room beneath a painted portrait of his late father, who died of complications caused by years of alcohol abuse, when Cristiano was 20. The light is clean and enticing outside, and so Cristiano strolls the meandering driveway down to the sand-colored boxes of his eight-car garage, where he keeps some (but not all) of his fleet, including (reportedly) a Maserati GranCabrio, Bentley Continental GT, Porsche Cayenne Turbo, Lamborghini Aventador, Ferrari 599 GTO, (8) Rolls-Royce Phantom, Aston Martin DB9, team-issue Audi, etc. Once he digests his lunch, (9) he selects the Audi and drives himself to practice.
Though Real Madrid is preparing to face a bottom-feeder team, “it’s the most easy that become the most difficult,” Cristiano knows. So he is strong at practice—two hours of squad-topping effort. (10) It should be that way: Cristiano is the highest-paid player on a team that can sometimes, during a match, put a half-billion dollars’ worth of talent on the field at once. (11) Though there have been downs, (12) his career is anomalous for its highly sustained ups. On Sporting Lisbon, Manchester United, and Real Madrid, he has stood as the archetypal example of a player you love when he’s on your team and loathe if he’s on anyone else’s. He doesn’t lose sleep over the fact. “If God can’t please everyone,” he said in 2009, “I won’t, either.”
After picking up Cristiano Jr. from school in the afternoon, Cristiano calls his mother (who still lives on the Portuguese island of Madeira, (13) where Cristiano grew up, though in a new home on the water, a gift from her son) and his brother (who helps run some of CR’s businesses, including the CR7 Museum (14) on Madeira) and his agent, Jorge Mendes (for whom Cristiano bought a Greek island this summer). Cristiano puts his time in at his heavily mirrored personal gym. He takes a short nap with Cristiano Jr. (15) And then, around seven o’clock, he hops in the Rolls and makes his way to another house in the gated community.
Ben Watts
He's a father, so technically this is a dadbod
Trunks, $27, by CR7 Underwear
Necklace by David Yurman
Watch by TAG Heuer
16.He has no plans to trade up to this house: “No, no, because I think it’s too big for me. To be with two persons in 10,000 square, I think it’s too big for me.”
This house is like his, only bigger. No one lives here. The owner died a couple of years ago, Cristiano says, and the daughter grants him access when he needs it. He’s been photographed here “many times” and treats it as a hot set for the CR7 brand. (16) Shirt shoots. Underwear shoots. And now a shoot for the American version of a magazine on which he’s appeared on the cover in several other countries.
He arrives at the secure drive, parks beside a fountain lit like a Vegas pool party, and walks to the front door while handlers gathering inside scream for the proper people to “receive him.” He walks up the slate steps and through the front doors and removes his sunglasses. He speaks Portuguese, he speaks Spanish, he speaks English. He shakes hands but doesn’t always meet the eyes attached to them. He has diamonds in his ears.
He meets the Brazilian supermodel with whom he’ll be photographed. Her name is Alessandra Ambrosio. In any other room on any other continent, hers would be the most recognizable face and body. (17) They greet, they kiss, they chat in Portuguese. The sun sets, and the vast grounds of cypress trees and pea gravel go so black it’s like a curtain’s been pulled.
He sits on a velveteen sofa. There are poker chips and playing cards. He is wearing—(18) The photographer asks Cristiano to toss the playing cards. He flicks them like ninja stars at Cristiano Jr. The boy dodges the cards. He’s in stitches. While working his way through the deck, Cristiano arrives at a seven of diamonds and flashes it at Cristiano Jr., smiling and winking. (19)
It is evident that, for Cristiano, there isn’t really anyone else in the room but his son. (20) Never mind the two dozen strangers present, all of whom are willing him with their minds to do certain things for the camera—even if it’s just the photographer who’s vocalizing it.
20.For all of Cristiano’s popularity, he operates within a tight circle, even by famous-person standards. He has his mother, his brother, his agent, his manager, a few friends, whomever he’s dating (current rumors say it’s the daughter of his agent—further alarming the in-circle-ness of his orbit), and, of course, his son. In the documentary Ronaldo, he says: “In football, I don’t have a lot of friends. The people who I really trust, there are not many.… Most of the time, I’m alone.”
“Unzip him, Ále!” the photographer shouts. “Lean in! Grab him!” Cristiano Jr. giggles and covers his eyes when Alessandra closes in on his father’s body, rests her head in his lap. Cristiano catches his son gawking at Alessandra: “Te gusta, aye?!”
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