Ronaldo: Goals, Wins, Investments

At first, his practice had stayed hidden in the hours after school. He preferred the court when the older boys had not yet arrived. Their games were louder and harder, and they treated the ball as something that had to be earned. Ronaldo was younger, smaller, and still learning how quickly a loose ball could disappear beneath another player’s foot. Alone, he could repeat a mistake without hearing laughter. Alone, he could take the same shot twenty times until the movement felt less like an experiment and more like a decision.

The ball bounced badly from the wall. Ronaldo adjusted his stride, reached it before it struck a drain, and sent it toward the far stone.

“Again,” he said quietly.

He did not say it as encouragement. He said it as a demand.

The next attempt missed. The ball clipped the outside of the stone and rolled into the alley. Ronaldo chased it past a doorway, trapped it against the wall, and brought it back. His knees were dusty. Sweat collected beneath his school shirt, and the rough surface had begun to sting through the thin soles of his shoes.

He set the ball down.

This time, he approached from a sharper angle. The shot looked as though it was heading beyond the goal, but the outside of his foot gave it a late curve. It crossed the narrow space and struck the wall behind the stones.

Ronaldo watched the rebound.

That was the part he wanted to understand. A goal did not always begin with a clean path. Sometimes it began with a poor surface, a defender closing in, or a ball that refused to travel as expected. The street court offered no regular lines and no smooth grass. It forced him to see the next possibility before the first one had ended.

The older boys arrived while he was still practicing. Their voices entered the alley before their feet did. One carried a better ball under his arm. Another kicked a loose bottle aside as he stepped onto the court.

Ronaldo moved toward his worn ball.

“Are you playing here?” one of them asked.

Ronaldo looked at the stones marking the goal. “I was practicing.”

The boy glanced at the ball. “That is not a game.”

“It can be.”

The answer came before Ronaldo had measured it. The older boys laughed, not cruelly at first, but with the certainty of players who believed the court belonged to them. One of them took the ball from Ronaldo with the side of his shoe and sent it toward the far end of the alley.

“Then bring it back,” he said.

Ronaldo ran after it. The ball struck a wall, bounced from a step, and disappeared behind a wooden crate. The alley was not arranged for football. Every surface interrupted the movement. A drain caught the ball. A doorway narrowed the route. The wall returned passes at different heights. By the time Ronaldo reached the crate, one of the boys had already taken possession.

The theft happened again when Ronaldo tried to join their game. A stronger shoulder moved him away from the ball, and a quick touch sent it between two players. He turned late. Another boy reached it first and carried it toward the stones.

Ronaldo followed, but the court gave him no room to recover. His foot scraped the concrete. The ball struck the side wall and rebounded behind him. He turned back, only to see the older boys moving forward without him.

He understood the obstacle clearly. It was not only his age or strength. The court rewarded whoever reacted first. If he waited for the ball to arrive in the place he expected, someone else would take it. If he challenged directly, the older boys could use their bodies to push him away. He had to use the walls, the narrow spaces, and the bad bounces before they did.

The next time the ball was stolen from him, Ronaldo did not chase the player carrying it. He ran toward the space beside the goal.

The older boy approached from the left, expecting Ronaldo to meet him. Ronaldo stopped, turned his shoulder, and waited until the ball came loose from the player’s foot. He touched it against the wall. The rebound moved behind the defender and into the narrow channel between the wall and the stone.

Ronaldo reached it first.

A foot blocked the direct shot. He shifted the ball across his body, almost losing it on the uneven concrete, then struck from an angle that left little room. The ball passed between the stones.

For a moment, the court became quiet enough for the sound of the ball hitting the wall to be heard.

“That was luck,” one of the boys said.

Ronaldo retrieved the ball. “Then I will do it again.”

The older boys did not invite him into their game. Instead, they placed the ball at the center of the court and began again. Ronaldo stayed near the edge, watching. He studied the direction of each pass and the way the players turned their hips before moving. He noticed that the strongest player always took an extra touch before shooting. He noticed that another boy protected the ball with his left side but struggled when forced toward the wall.

When the ball rolled free, Ronaldo entered the space before anyone called for him.

He received it with his right foot and let it travel farther than seemed safe. The nearest defender stepped forward. Ronaldo followed the ball, reached it near the wall, and struck across the goal. The shot hit the inside of the far stone and crossed the line.

The older boys protested that the goal was too narrow to count.

Ronaldo pointed at the stones. “That is where the goal is.”

The discussion ended when the ball returned to him. He placed it down and waited.

The next attempt came from even closer to the corner. There was no clear route. The wall stood beside him, and two defenders blocked the front. Ronaldo touched the ball backward, drew one defender toward him, then used the wall to send it around the other. He reached the rebound before it stopped and lifted the ball over the nearest foot.

It landed inside the goal.

The third goal came after the ball was taken from him. The fourth came when a defender tried to force him away from the wall. The fifth came from a low shot that changed direction after striking a crack in the concrete. None of the goals looked the same. That was the important detail. Ronaldo was not repeating one trick. He was repeating the search.

The court grew darker as the afternoon moved on. The air cooled, but the concrete still held the heat of the day. Ronaldo’s shirt clung to his back, and the skin on his palm had become rough from catching himself after several slips. The older boys were no longer laughing. They were watching his first touch.

One of them took the ball before Ronaldo could reach it.

“You want to keep scoring?” he asked.

Ronaldo nodded.

“Then play properly. There is a trial soon. Go there and do it.”

The words changed the nature of the afternoon. Until then, Ronaldo had been trying to prove something within the boundaries of the street court. He had wanted the older boys to notice that he could create a goal from a position they considered finished. Now the possibility of a formal youth trial stood beyond the alley, with proper goals, organized teams, and people judging every touch.

He did not answer immediately. The court had given him the ball, but it had also taken his privacy. The practice he had kept for himself had become public. Every miss had been seen. Every goal had been measured by boys who were older and stronger.

The rival held the ball against his foot.

“You will need more than this,” he said.

Ronaldo looked at the worn surface, at the dust gathered in its seams, and at the stones marking the goal. “I know.”

The game continued. Ronaldo scored again, then once more after the ball was taken from him near the wall. His winning streak was not clean. He lost possession, slipped, and had to recover from positions where a smoother court would have offered an easier answer. But each failure shortened the time between mistake and adjustment.

By the final goal, the older boys had stopped giving him space. Ronaldo received the ball with a defender close behind him, used his body to protect it, and turned toward the only open side. The shot came from a narrow angle. It struck the wall, changed direction, and crossed between the stones.

He had achieved what he had wanted: the older boys had seen him score when the court offered no obvious route. But the cost was already clear. His hidden practice could no longer remain hidden, and the standard had moved beyond the street.

Looking back, I now understand that the court taught Ronaldo Mendes an early version of Ronaldogoalartistry. The goal was never only the final touch. It began with reading the wall, feeling the surface beneath his shoes, anticipating the theft of the ball, and repeating the movement after failure. The rough alley did not give him ideal conditions. It gave him problems, and those problems forced invention.

That instinct later became part of the larger record associated with Ronaldogoalartistry, goal counts, football achievements, and signings at club and national level. Comparisons with lionellmessi and other footballers would come much later, as would the discipline connected with Ronaldodiverseinvestments, training, and lifestyle. On the Madeira streets, none of those measures existed yet. There was only a worn ball, a narrow goal, and the demand to make the next touch better than the last.

Ronaldo picked up the ball and walked away from the court as the older boys began discussing the trial. He no longer moved toward home to keep his practice to himself. He carried the ball openly, already thinking about the formal test ahead and the harder question it presented: whether the instincts learned between walls and stones would survive when the goal was larger, the pitch was wider, and someone else controlled the rules.

End of chapter one. 39 more chapters and about 97,724 words in the full book.