At 40, Cristiano Ronaldo (Madeira, Portugal) already imagines himself retired. While for us retirement is almost a chimera at that age, the Portuguese footballer, one of the best in the world, is already thinking about the second part of his life, dedicated to his hobby —like paddle tennis or his collection of luxury cars, which among other things he doesn’t drive—, to see his five children grow up and be with “the love of his life”, Georgina Rodríguez, the woman he asked to marry last August. He told this in an interview, broadcast on Tuesday 4 November, with British journalist Piers Morgan on the program he hosts on YouTube.
In a relaxed conversation with whom Cristiano considers “a friend” (it was not the first time that he and Morgan chatted), the captain of the Portuguese football team, currently a player in the Saudi League, spoke for 40 minutes about the sport in which he is a professional, of course, but also about other more personal aspects of his life in which – he says it himself naturally – money is fundamental. In fact, the topic of his fortune takes up much of the conversation and comes up quickly. Without even 10 minutes of conversation, to the journalist’s question: “At what moment did you realize you were a millionaire?”, Ronaldo, after a very brief pause for reflection, replies: “I knew it would happen, so I was prepared”. The footballer, who is referring to being a millionaire, not the question, goes on to explain: “It was a matter of time, so honestly I felt super happy. It was like when you win a Ballon d’Or and you feel like you’ve achieved a goal. For me, even reaching that figure was a goal.”
Although neither the interviewee nor the interviewer say what that figure is, in 2016 the former Real Madrid player became the highest paid athlete in the world, succeeding boxer Floyd Mayweather on the Forbes list after pocketing 77 million in 12 months. On October 8, it was also learned that Cristiano Ronaldo became the first billionaire footballer after reaching $1.4 billion with the extension of his contract with his current team, Al-Nassr.
However, during the interview, which has almost three million views on YouTube, the player states that he is not obsessed with his luck. “Money can help you in many ways, but when you reach a certain level, it stops mattering. Although it is always good to have more, because we are human and we are never satisfied with what we already have.” At the end of the question, which he actually continues to ask himself for almost the entire interview, he confesses: “My plan was to become so rich, I didn’t imagine that I would become so rich so soon, but I knew I would be.”
In case at this point in the conversation between the footballer and Morgan anyone can’t imagine the sum of millions he owns, the interviewer, who admits that he will never have as much money as what the interviewee accumulates on his left wrist, on which he wears an impressive watch – he will later confess that it is a gift – asks him what is the most expensive thing he has ever bought. The champion’s response, which doesn’t seem easy judging by his concentrated face, ends up being “a plane”. In reality, he clarifies, he bought it when he was 30, but now he has just renovated it.
If a few million more or less already means little to him, they made the difference when finally, and after nine years of relationship and five children together, he proposed to his partner, the influencer Georgina Rodríguez (Buenos Aires, Argentina, 31 years old). Thus, he made the world participate in this event in their lives from his Instagram profile (he has more than 71 million followers), where he showed the spectacular engagement jewel composed of a large oval-cut diamond, set in a ring, which according to experts could have cost between five and six million euros.
Her fiancé also spoke about it with Piers Morgan, to whom he assured that this stone was a request from his partner – who he has long called his wife – but that it was not an engagement ring. He was on the fly, during a dinner where he was preparing to give it to the model, while (coincidentally) a friend filmed him with his cell phone and his daughters woke up from bed (it was 1 in the morning, according to his story) conveniently to witness the scene and ask what was going on, when the footballer decided it was time to take the step and ask her to marry him: “One thing I loved was that she didn’t care about the ring, but instead asked me if I was serious about it.” He also says that when he looked into her eyes, tears came to his eyes: “Good things come at the right time. I knew that one day I would ask her, even if I didn’t know how I would do it,” says the footballer. What remains to be known is the date of a wedding that does not promise to be simple.
