Who Is Ronaldo Nazário?

1. Bento Ribeiro and Cruzeiro: the boy who played futsal

Ronaldo Luís Nazário de Lima was born in Itaguai, in the state of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, and grew up in the poor suburb of Bento Ribeiro. The date of his birth is itself a small mystery: he says he was born on 18 September 1976, but his birth certificate, issued four days later because his parents could not at first afford the fee, gives 22 September, and both dates are celebrated by his clubs and supporters. His father, according to a story Ronaldo has told himself, paid the doctor who delivered him with three kilos of shrimp caught on the beach, because the family had no money.

As a child he played futsal, the indoor version of football played with fewer players on a smaller surface, and the close control, quick feet and dribbling that futsal demands became the hallmarks of his game. He began playing organised football at twelve for the neighbourhood Social Ramos Club, and at fourteen he joined São Cristóvão, before moving in 1992 to Cruzeiro, one of Brazil's leading clubs, where he became one of the most promising young players in the country. He scored prolifically for Cruzeiro, and by the time he was seventeen the great clubs of Europe were competing to sign him.

In 1994, at the age of seventeen, he was selected for Brazil's squad at the World Cup in the United States. Brazil won the tournament, but Ronaldo did not play a single match, and he watched the final from the bench. It was a strange beginning to a World Cup career that would become one of the greatest in the history of the tournament, and it taught him patience. He left Cruzeiro that year for PSV Eindhoven in the Netherlands, beginning a European career that would take him to four of the biggest clubs in the world.

2. PSV and Barcelona: the phenomenon arrives in Europe

At PSV Eindhoven, Ronaldo scored 55 goals in 56 games in two seasons, winning the Dutch league in 1995 and the Dutch Cup in 1996, and establishing himself as the most exciting young striker in Europe. His pace was extraordinary: he could run past defenders as if they were standing still, and his finishing, with either foot, was calm and precise. The Dutch league, which had produced many great strikers, had never seen anything quite like him, and the move to a bigger league was only a matter of time.

In 1996 he joined FC Barcelona, and in a single season he scored 34 goals in 37 appearances, helping the club win the Copa del Rey, the Spanish Super Cup and the UEFA Cup Winners' Cup. His goal against Compostela that season, in which he picked up the ball in his own half, ran past half the opposing team and scored, is still shown as one of the greatest goals ever scored in Spain. He was named FIFA World Player of the Year in 1996, at the age of twenty, the youngest player ever to win the award, and he won it again in 1997, becoming the first player to win it in two consecutive years, and the Ballon d'Or in the same year.

The Barcelona season is remembered as one of the great individual seasons in the history of the game, and it is all the more remarkable because it lasted only a year. In 1997 he moved to Inter Milan in Italy, where his dribbling and his goals earned him the nickname Il Fenomeno, the Phenomenon, a name that followed him for the rest of his career. At Inter he won the UEFA Cup in 1998, and he was again the most feared striker in Europe, a player whom defenders said was impossible to stop when he was running at full speed.

3. France 1998: the final, the fit and the mystery

The 1998 World Cup in France was supposed to be Ronaldo's tournament. Brazil reached the final, and Ronaldo scored four goals on the way, winning the Golden Ball as the best player of the tournament. Hours before the final against France, however, he suffered a medical episode in the team hotel, described at the time as a convulsive fit, and he was initially left out of the team before being reinstated at the last moment. He played the final, but he was a shadow of himself, and Brazil lost 3-0 to France.

The circumstances of that night have been argued over ever since. The Brazilian team doctor said Ronaldo had suffered a convulsion and had been taken to hospital, and that he had recovered enough to play. Others, including some of his team-mates, have said that he should never have played, and that the decision to include him was a mistake. The exact cause of the episode has never been fully established, and the mystery has become one of the most debated episodes in the history of the World Cup, a story that is still told whenever a great player is asked to play through illness or injury.

Whatever happened that night, the 1998 final did not define Ronaldo. It would have been easy for a player to be broken by such a public failure, and for a time it seemed that he might be. But the response, four years later, was one of the great comebacks in sport, and it is the comeback, rather than the night in Paris, that his career is now remembered for. The Golden Ball he won in 1998, in a tournament he finished in distress, is a reminder of how good he had been even before the final.

4. The injuries and the comeback of 2002

In 1999, while playing for Inter Milan, Ronaldo suffered a serious knee injury that left him unable to play for almost two years. He ruptured a tendon in his right knee, and shortly after his comeback in 2000 he suffered another major knee injury that kept him out for the rest of the year. At the time, many people, including doctors, thought his career was over. He was twenty-three years old, he had already won almost everything, and the injuries were of a kind that had ended the careers of other great players.

He returned to competitive play in 2001, and in 2002 he was selected for Brazil's World Cup squad in Korea and Japan, despite doubts about his fitness. The doubts were answered in the most emphatic way possible. He scored eight goals in the tournament, winning the Golden Boot as its leading scorer, and he formed, with Rivaldo and Ronaldinho, one of the great attacking trios in the history of the game. In the final against Germany he scored both goals in a 2-0 victory, the second after a shot by Rivaldo that the German goalkeeper Oliver Kahn could only parry into his path, and Brazil won their fifth World Cup.

The 2002 tournament is the centrepiece of Ronaldo's career, not only because of the goals but because of what they meant. He had been written off, he had spent two years in rehabilitation, and he had returned to win the World Cup almost single-handedly. He was named FIFA World Player of the Year for the third time and won the Ballon d'Or for the second time, and his haircut at the tournament, a small triangle of hair at the front of an otherwise shaved head, became famous around the world, a distraction, he later said, from the injury to his leg that the press had been writing about.

5. Real Madrid, the galácticos and the 2006 World Cup

After the 2002 World Cup, Ronaldo moved to Real Madrid, where he joined the team of superstars known as the galácticos, playing alongside Zinedine Zidane, Luís Figo, Roberto Carlos and, later, David Beckham. He helped Real Madrid win the Spanish league in 2002-03 and again in 2006-07, and he scored more than a hundred goals for the club, becoming one of its most popular players. The galácticos era was glamorous and successful, but it was also criticised for valuing star names over team balance, and Ronaldo's time there was marked by both brilliance and the injuries that were beginning to catch up with him.

At the 2006 World Cup in Germany he scored three goals, bringing his career total at the tournament to fifteen, a record that stood until 2014, when it was broken by Germany's Miroslav Klose, who finished with sixteen, and that was then passed by Argentina's Lionel Messi, who reached twenty-one goals at the 2026 World Cup. Ronaldo played his last World Cup match in the quarter-final against France, which Brazil lost 1-0, and he never played in the tournament again. His fifteen goals, scored across three World Cups, remain one of the great records of the competition, and they were scored in an era when the tournament was smaller and the defences were, if anything, harder to break down.

In 2007 he joined AC Milan, but the following year he ruptured a tendon in his left knee, the same type of injury that had struck his right knee in 1999, and his time in Italy was cut short. In December 2008 he returned to Brazil and signed for Corinthians, where he helped the club win the São Paulo state championship and the Brazilian Cup in 2009, but he was plagued by injuries and by a thyroid condition that caused him to gain weight, and in February 2011, at the age of thirty-four, he announced his retirement, saying that the pain of the last two years had made him think about the end.

6. Owner, ambassador and the fight against racism

After retiring, Ronaldo became a businessman and a football executive. In 2018 he became the majority owner of the Spanish club Real Valladolid, and in 2021 he bought a stake in Cruzeiro, the club where his career had begun. In 2024 he said he would sell his holdings in both clubs, and he sold his stake in Cruzeiro in April 2024, while a sale of his Valladolid share was agreed in 2025. His time as an owner was mixed, as the clubs struggled on the field, but it showed a former player trying to run the game from the other side of the desk, and his experience as an owner has been watched closely by other former players.

In March 2025 he was appointed to lead a special task force by CONMEBOL, the governing body of South American football, with the mission of eradicating racism, discrimination and violence in the game. The appointment reflected his standing in the sport and the seriousness with which the problem is now taken in South America, where racist abuse of players has been a persistent issue. Ronaldo has spoken about the abuse he himself faced as a young Black player in Brazil and Europe, and his appointment was welcomed by players and campaigners.

He has also remained a visible figure in football as an ambassador and a pundit, working with Real Madrid, appearing at major tournaments, and presenting awards for the UEFA Champions League. He did not play at the 2026 World Cup, having retired fifteen years earlier, but he was present at the tournament as a celebrated guest: he attended the opening match at the Estadio Azteca in Mexico City alongside Ronaldinho, watched by the FIFA president, and before the tournament he visited the Brazil squad at their training camp to speak with the players. It was a fitting role for a man who had won the tournament twice and who remains one of the most recognisable figures in the game.

7. Why Ronaldo Nazário matters

Ronaldo matters because, for a few years at the end of the twentieth century, he played football in a way that no one had played it before and no one has played it since. He was not the most prolific goalscorer in history, and he was not the most decorated, but at his best he combined pace, power, skill and finishing in a single player, and defenders who faced him have described the experience as unlike facing any other striker. His goal against Compostela, his goals in the 2002 World Cup final, and his performances for Brazil in 1998 and 2002 are the evidence, and they are still watched by young players learning the game.

He also matters because of the comeback. The injuries of 1999 and 2000 would have ended most careers, and the fact that he returned from them to win the World Cup is a story that goes beyond football, about patience, rehabilitation and the refusal to accept that a career is over. Young players who suffer serious injuries are still told about Ronaldo, and the lesson is not only about knees and muscles but about the mind, and about the willingness to do the long, boring work of recovery when the crowds have gone home.

His legacy is secure. He scored 62 goals in 98 appearances for Brazil, the country's third-highest total behind Neymar and Pelé, and he won two World Cups, two Copa América titles, three FIFA World Player of the Year awards and two Ballon d'Or awards. But the numbers do not capture the whole of it. The best measure of Ronaldo is the reaction of those who played against him, who speak of him with a respect that borders on awe, and of those who watched him, who remember the feeling of seeing a player do things that seemed impossible. He was, as his nickname said, a phenomenon, and the game has not seen another like him.

Frequently asked questions

Sources and further reading

• Encyclopaedia Britannica — Ronaldo
• Wikipedia — Ronaldo (Brazilian footballer)
• FIFA — Ronaldo Nazário, Brazil 2002

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• Who Was Cleopatra? — Cleopatra VII was the last ruler of Ptolemaic Egypt, a multilingual stateswoman who kept her kingdom independent for 21 years before Rome annexed it.
• Who Was Diego Maradona? — Diego Maradona was an Argentine footballer who captained Argentina to the 1986 World Cup and is widely regarded as one of the greatest players in history.
• Who Was Don Bradman? — Don Bradman was an Australian cricketer who averaged 99.94 in Test cricket, a record so far ahead of any other batsman that it remains famous in sport.
• Who Was Elvis Presley? — Elvis Presley took gospel, country and rhythm and blues and turned them into rock and roll, becoming the most famous singer of his century.
• Who Was Emily Dickinson? — Emily Dickinson was an American poet who wrote nearly 1,800 poems in private in Amherst, Massachusetts, and was barely published in her lifetime.
• Who Was Faiz Ahmed Faiz? — Faiz Ahmed Faiz was Pakistan's most celebrated modern Urdu poet, whose verse joined romantic lyricism with resistance to injustice.
• Who Was Franz Beckenbauer? — Franz Beckenbauer was a German footballer known as Der Kaiser, who won the World Cup as captain in 1974 and as manager in 1990.
• Who Was Freddie Mercury? — Freddie Mercury was the lead singer of Queen, a four-octave voice and fearless showman who wrote Bohemian Rhapsody and We Are the Champions.
• Who Was Frida Kahlo? — Frida Kahlo was a Mexican painter known for uncompromising, brilliantly coloured self-portraits exploring identity, the body and death.
• Who Was Galileo Galilei? — Galileo Galilei reshaped astronomy with his telescopic discoveries of 1610, defended a Sun-centred universe, and was tried by the Inquisition in 1633.
• Who Was Genghis Khan? — Genghis Khan united the Mongol tribes and built the largest contiguous land empire in history, a conqueror and lawgiver whose legacy is still argued over.
• Who Was George Washington? — George Washington won American independence, presided over the Constitutional Convention, and as first president defined the office — then walked away.
• Who Was Guglielmo Marconi? — Guglielmo Marconi was an Italian inventor who built the first practical wireless telegraph and sent the first transatlantic radio signal in 1901.
• Who Was Henry Ford? — Henry Ford was an American industrialist who founded the Ford Motor Company, built the Model T and perfected the moving assembly line.
• Who Was Isaac Newton? — Isaac Newton wrote the laws of motion and universal gravitation, invented calculus and transformed optics, leaving a lasting legacy in science.
• Who Was James Watt? — James Watt did not invent the steam engine, but his separate condenser of 1765 made it efficient enough to power the Industrial Revolution.
• Who Was Jane Austen? — Jane Austen published six novels in her lifetime, anonymously, and died at 41. This explains her life, her novels, her irony and her growing reputation.
• Who Was Jesus Christ? — Jesus of Nazareth is the central figure of Christianity, the world's largest religion. This explains his life in the Gospels, his teachings and his legacy.
• Who Was Johan Cruyff? — Johan Cruyff was the star of Total Football, won three Ballon d'Or awards, and as a manager built the Barcelona team that shaped modern football.
• Who Was Johannes Gutenberg? — Johannes Gutenberg built the first mechanised printing press in Europe and printed the Gutenberg Bible around 1455, changing how the world shared ideas.
• Who Was John Keats? — John Keats died of tuberculosis in Rome at 25, having written his six great odes in a single year. This explains his short life, his poetry and his fame.
• Who Was Joseph Stalin? — Joseph Stalin led the Soviet Union from the 1920s until 1953, industrialised the country and led it through the Second World War, ruling through terror.
• Who Was Julius Caesar? — Julius Caesar conquered Gaul, crossed the Rubicon and remade Rome's calendar and government, and was murdered by senators who feared he would be king.
• Who Was Kobe Bryant? — Kobe Bryant won five NBA championships with the Los Angeles Lakers and became known for the Mamba Mentality, on and off the court.
• Who Was Leo Tolstoy? — Leo Tolstoy wrote War and Peace and Anna Karenina, then abandoned literary fame for a radical moral philosophy that influenced Gandhi and the world.
• Who Was Leonardo da Vinci? — Leonardo da Vinci painted the Mona Lisa and The Last Supper and filled notebooks with anatomy and engineering, becoming the symbol of the Renaissance.
• Who Was Ludwig van Beethoven? — Ludwig van Beethoven wrote nine symphonies, 32 piano sonatas and the Missa Solemnis, much of it while deaf. This explains his life and legacy.
• Who Was Mahatma Gandhi? — Mahatma Gandhi led India to independence through nonviolent resistance, and his ideas shaped civil-rights movements worldwide.
• Who Was Mao Zedong? — Mao Zedong founded the People's Republic of China in 1949 and led it until 1976, bringing unification and the Great Leap Forward and Cultural Revolution.
• Who Was Margaret Thatcher? — Margaret Thatcher was the first woman to serve as British prime minister, leading the UK from 1979 to 1990 through reform, the Falklands War and division.
• Who Was Marie Curie? — Marie Curie discovered polonium and radium and remains the only person to win Nobel Prizes in two different sciences, a pioneer of radioactivity research.
• Who Was Marilyn Monroe? — Marilyn Monroe was the biggest star of the 1950s, the blonde bombshell of Gentlemen Prefer Blondes and Some Like It Hot, who fought the studio system.
• Who Was Mark Twain? — Mark Twain, born Samuel Langhorne Clemens, wrote Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn and became America's most famous humorist.
• Who Was Maya Angelou? — Maya Angelou was a poet, memoirist and civil rights activist whose autobiography I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings made her widely read.
• Who Was Michael Jackson? — Michael Jackson, the King of Pop, made Thriller, the best-selling album in history, and changed music video, dance and pop stardom.
• Who Was Mirza Ghalib? — Mirza Ghalib (1797-1869) is the pre-eminent Urdu and Persian poet of the last Mughal era, whose ghazals on love, loss and doubt are still recited.
• Who Was Muhammad Ali Jinnah? — Muhammad Ali Jinnah was the barrister and statesman who led the All-India Muslim League and became Pakistan's first Governor-General in 1947.
• Who Was Muhammad Ali? — Muhammad Ali was the three-time heavyweight champion who called himself The Greatest, and the most famous athlete of the twentieth century.
• Who Was Napoleon Bonaparte? — Napoleon Bonaparte rose from Corsica to Emperor of the French, redrew the map of Europe, and left a legal code that still shapes law across the world.
• Who Was Nelson Mandela? — Nelson Mandela spent 27 years in prison under apartheid, then became South Africa's first democratically elected president and a Nobel Peace laureate.
• Who Was Nikola Tesla? — Nikola Tesla developed the alternating-current power system, the induction motor and the Tesla coil, making long-distance electric power practical.
• Who Was Osama bin Laden? — Osama bin Laden founded al-Qaeda in 1988 and organised the September 11, 2001 attacks, in which nearly 3,000 people were killed.
• Who Was Pablo Neruda? — Pablo Neruda was Chile's great poet, a Nobel laureate, a communist senator and a diplomat. This explains his poetry, his politics and his death.
• Who Was Pablo Picasso? — Pablo Picasso co-founded Cubism, painted Guernica, and spent 75 years breaking the rules of art — the most influential artist of the twentieth century.
• Who Was Pelé? — Pele is the only footballer to win three World Cups, the youngest winner, and the game's first global icon. This is his life, his goals and his legacy.
• Who Was Pope Francis? The People's Pope — Pope Francis, the first pope from the Americas and the first Jesuit pope, led the Catholic Church from 2013 to 2025 with an emphasis on mercy and the poor.
• Who Was Prophet Muhammad? — The Prophet Muhammad is the founder of Islam, the world's second-largest religion. This explains his life, his teachings and his legacy.
• Who Was Queen Elizabeth II? — Queen Elizabeth II reigned for 70 years, from 1952 to 2022 — the longest reign in British history. This explains her life, her reign and her legacy.
• Who Was Rabindranath Tagore? — Rabindranath Tagore was the first non-European to win the Nobel Prize in Literature, and the author of the national anthems of India and Bangladesh.
• Who Was Rosa Parks? — Rosa Parks was not a tired seamstress who acted on impulse. She was a trained activist and NAACP secretary whose bus refusal was a deliberate act.
• Who Was Rosalind Franklin? — Rosalind Franklin's X-ray image, Photograph 51, gave Watson and Crick the key evidence for the double helix. This is her life and the credit debate.
• Who Was Rumi? — Rumi, the thirteenth-century Persian poet of Konya, wrote the Masnavi and the Divan-e Shams, and became the most widely read poet in the world.
• Who Was Shane Warne? — Shane Warne took 708 Test wickets, bowled the Ball of the Century in 1993 and won the 1999 World Cup with Australia. This explains his career.
• Who Was Stephen Hawking? — Stephen Hawking was a theoretical physicist who showed that black holes emit radiation and wrote A Brief History of Time. He died in 2018, aged 76.
• Who Was Steve Jobs? — Steve Jobs co-founded Apple in 1976, was forced out in 1985, built Pixar, and returned to launch the iMac, iPod, iPhone and iPad. He died in 2011, aged 56.
• Who Was Thomas Edison? — Thomas Edison held 1,093 US patents, invented the phonograph and the practical incandescent lamp, and built the first commercial electric power system.
• Who Was Vincent van Gogh? — Vincent van Gogh produced about 2,100 artworks in a single decade, including The Starry Night and Sunflowers, and became famous only after his death at 37.
• Who Was William Shakespeare? — William Shakespeare is the most performed playwright in history, yet almost nothing is reliably known about his private life.
• Who Was William Wordsworth? — William Wordsworth launched English Romanticism with Lyrical Ballads and wrote The Prelude, the great autobiographical poem. This explains his life.
• Who Was Winston Churchill? — Winston Churchill led Britain through the Second World War and won the Nobel Prize in Literature, and his record on empire is still debated.
• Who Was Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart? — Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart was a child prodigy who composed more than 600 works before his death at 35, defining the Classical era.
• Why Van Gogh Became Famous After Death — Vincent van Gogh died in 1890 almost unknown, and within a few decades his paintings were among the most loved in the world.