The
Real Madrid star was ‘the diamond’ of Sporting Lisbon’s academy as a
youngster, but he was bullied by the other players because of his thick
Madeira accent.
And
things got so bad that he once threw a chair at a teacher who failed to
stop the mocking, according to Sheffield Wednesday midfielder Jose
Semedo, who grew up with Ronaldo at the Portuguese club.
‘He
was the best,’ Semedo told the Times. He controlled the ball,
outskilled everyone, didn’t pass the ball, scored. Oh my God. And then
he spoke: he was from Madiera, and the accent there is very different.
‘Everyone started to laugh. He had a hard time with that accent. It sounded like it was not Portuguese. We couldn’t understand. He threw a chair at a teacher once because people were laughing and they didn’t stop it.’
But
the pair, who are still close friends who speak most days, were once
room-mates, and Ronaldo helped save Semedo’s career, when Sporting
threatened to kick the youngster out of their academy.
Ronaldo,
who was the golden boy of the youth set-up, told the club, at the age
of 14, that if Semedo could not live at the club, he too would leave,
and allowing his friend to live in his room.
‘I owe everything I have to him,’ admits Semedo. ‘The place I am from in Setubal is not a good place for a young man. A lot of my friends from there were involved in crime. Some of them are dead now, or in jail. If I had gone back, maybe I would have stolen cars with them. He changed my life. My family, my children, my career: it is all because of him.’
The
30-year-old Wednesday star also revealed, however, that they had their
differences, particularly when it came to competing against each other.
Semedo
claims that Ronaldo would not speak to him for several days if he lost a
race to his team-mate, and began going to the gym on his own when
friends mentioned his room-mate might be becoming the bigger of the two.
It is that refusal to lose, argues Semedo, that has made Ronaldo the incredible player he has become today.
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