PSG 5-4 Saudi All-Star XI: Ronaldo bags a brace… but it is Messi’s side that emerge victorious

With a king’s ransom in his pocket and a pawn’s responsibilities at his feet, the old man finally got to work on Thursday night.

He was here in the most unusual place and also the other guy, two men locked in a dance that has lasted 14 years. Cristiano Ronaldo and Lionel Messi, Lionel Messi and Cristiano Ronaldo: the order always mattered and what a delight that tango has been.

They have played in El Clásico, fought in the Champions League, faced off in the colors of their country and together they have reached such magnificent heights.

Could one have done without the other? Possibly. Would it have been so special? No possibility. Ali needed Frazier and Foreman. Nicklaus needed Palmer. Navratilova needed Evert. The Red Sox need the Yankees. Ronaldo needed Messi, Messi needed Ronaldo.

But maybe it’s over now. Perhaps this 37th squad of aging rivals was the last we’ll see them on the same field.

And there is sadness in that, just as there is curiosity in how one of the best footballers the world has ever seen has come to this. A curiosity about modern sport and a curiosity about international politics and an ego curiosity that led Ronaldo away from one life as a serious athlete and into another as a billboard or a washcloth, depending on how you look at these discussions.

So perhaps this is how the rivalry ends, in a field in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, where a great team, led by Messi, Neymar and Killian Mbappé, played an exhibition against the hybrid ‘All Stars’ of Al-Hilal and Al Nassr. , the latter will be Ronaldo’s new teammates.

When it was over, Messi’s group had won 5-4. A good game, actually. Messi scored the first, Ronaldo responded with two of his own, and perhaps quite enjoyed himself, just as the locals enjoyed watching him.

The truth is that they love soccer in this country. But it was impossible to shake the idea that while Messi goes on tour as a World Cup winner, Ronaldo will stay here. Fabulously rich at the rate of £173m a year, but a man for whom the pursuit of excellence is apparently not what he once was.

For now, its purpose seems to point in other directions. He says it’s about conquering Asia just like he conquered Europe, but he’s also smart enough to know the game he’s being deployed for off the pitch.

The game of inspiring the youth of a soccer-mad nation, to be guided by the spoken accounts of those who brought it here, and the broader game of cleaning up the reputation of a country with an image problem, to be guided by those whose business it is to monitor human rights.

That will be an important part of Ronaldo’s narrative, just as it has been for Messi in his alliance with Qatar and his role as tourism ambassador for Saudi Arabia, who would undoubtedly move heaven, earth and billions of barrels of oil. oil to bring it here in a more permanent arrangement.

The fact that they were meeting here, in the King Fahd Stadium, was reason enough for Amnesty International to express its grave concern. One of its directors, Peter Frankental, said: “This match is a reminder that Saudi Arabia’s sport-washing efforts are running at full speed.”

It would go on to detail 81 executions in a single day last March, and draconian sentences handed down to those who protested for women’s rights. That will be the backdrop for Ronaldo now, just as it has been for those in Formula One, boxing, LIV golf and other areas of the fastest-expanding empire the sport has ever known.

It’s open to debate whether that’s a consideration for most sports fans. For many it is a serious concern; for many others, headers, volleys, chips and putts are enough of the content they need.

Which brings us back to the grand opening. When Ronaldo took the field for the warm-up, 10 yards ahead of his closest teammate, naturally he was already £10m richer from his time in Saudi Arabia, and possibly deafened by the reception as well.

They can fit 67,000 in this stadium and they claimed they sold out within minutes of ticket sales, even if that seemed to fail the eyesight test, based on the number of blue seats visible. Equally striking were the stripes of red reserved for the great and good.

We can safely assume that Mushref al-Ghamdi, the property magnate who paid a fat £2.2m at auction for his house at the time, occupied one of them, although there was no confirmation of any actual presence, in the broadest sense of the word.

Perhaps that in itself is part of the larger story. Perhaps this was just another day in the scheme of using sport to convey a certain image. The biggest day to date, sure, but just one more, nonetheless, and by any sound reasoning, the most significant and powerful figures in Saudi Arabia are not the soccer ball kickers.

For a while, it looked as if Messi would own the show: scoring after three minutes was an excellent act of trolling. But Ronaldo equalized with a penalty after taking a header while disputing a cross with Keylor Navas, his old friend from those distant days at Real Madrid.

PSG were soon ahead 2-1, albeit with 10 men, and after Neymar missed a penalty, Ronaldo scored the second and the venue went wild. He attempted his siuuu celebration but a teammate missed his jump; he will no doubt learn the protocol.

After some ups and downs, the details of which were always going to be secondary, the score reached 5-3 and then both Messi and Ronaldo were substituted after an hour. The place was silent for the fun, and more when there were no hugs from long-time rivals. Not even a look.

Maybe that was an anticlimax. Maybe like a few other things, it was also kind of sad.