An interview with Dr. Combi (Inter's Team doctor) about Ronaldo

Now that the suffering is over and that the light at the end of the tunnel is getting stronger and stronger, the chorus of prophets of doom is beginning to fade. The heavy barrage of sibylline opinions, home-made diagnoses and sceptical views too cruel to be true is finally slackening. But it is not to be forgotten that success has many fathers, sometimes putative fathers too, but adversities have to be faced on one’s own. As of last month, give or take a day, Ronaldo is once again, on the field, a football player. Of course he had never ceased to be, even after a terrible double accident left him with his left leg’s hamstring injured at the knee, forcing him to stay away from the fields for a total period of two years. For a normal athlete recovering from serious medical problems, returning to activity means testing one’s performance as compared to one’s previous record; but for the Brazilian star the road to normality has been much more complicated. His own nickname can attest to that. To come back as a “Phenomenon” Ronaldo had to recover the technical and athletic coordination that made his plays unique and devastating or, in a word, phenomenal. Consequently his medical calvary has had a different timing when compared with the regular phasing of a complete clinical rehabilitation. To be sure, Ronaldo’s life restarted at a slow pulse when he was finally clinically healed and could resume training with his team-mates. But the true peak, the thrill that brought him once again in contact with his real world, the world of a world-class scorer, arrived on a specific date and time. December 8, 2001, 4:26 p.m., the Rigamonti Stadium in Brescia. A quick exchange with Vieri and a right-footer blasts into the goal behind Castellazzi. A few seconds are enough to burn away a heap of nasty predictions, of bad thoughts, of doubts and painful memories. Ronald has made his most important appointment, the one that counts, that one that makes you feel, although it sounds banal, still alive and not only as a footballer. But let’s trace back the course of events that led to that day in the life of a young man who after all is just twenty-something, and let’s do so with the authoritative words of Doctor Franco Combi, team doctor for Inter, who has followed the Phenomenon’s medical recovery step by step.

“First of all it has to be said that Ronaldo’s accident was of a unique kind; until now no other football player has had to be operated twice on the rotula attachment of the hamstring. People tend to forget that among the peculiar traits of players of this level there are automatisms and mechanisms that must be continuously stimulated, but during an unspecified period of time. “If you think at how long it took Del Piero to resume his status of champion after being operated on a cruciform ligament, which normally takes from six to eight months for complete recovery, then you can understand how wonderful it is for Ronaldo to have reached his current condition. Ronaldo is clinically healed, he’s feeling fine and he’s at peace; but adjustment processes can be so personal and indeterminable that it is not always possible to quantify them with precision. “Plenty of things have been said about his recent injuries, and mostly wrong. As for myself, I decided to quit giving detailed explanations once I realized that the people I was speaking to were not always sufficiently receptive and prepared to draw the proper conclusions.” How true. It must not be forgotten (as I myself have witnessed more than once) that press circles have no shortage of Solons with pre-cooked verdicts, who either by hearsay or through groundless personal convictions have already decided the outcome of any story. Seeing Ronaldo getting hurt a couple of times in his first official post-healing games was enough for them to start pontificating with their do-it-yourself first-aid considerations mixed with gratuitous spite. Which Dr. Combi has not forgotten, and which now, with Ronnie well again, he condemns with even more satisfaction. “Up to now the problem for Ronaldo was the excessive air of anticipation surrounding him. He is an extraordinary young man but he realizes that people expect a lot from him, and he has suffered a few slight relapses due to emotional conditions to which many have contributed. In the end the main reason can be found in the excess of attention placed on his comeback. We had reached a particular condition, on the muscular level, that was interfering with everything, “tarnishing” proper athletic performance. It has to do with an increased muscular tone occurring when athletes feel the importance of upcoming engagements, and begin to mentally charge themselves. This state of excitement normally wears off in the field as the game proceeds. But in Ronaldo’s case, the pressure had been so strong that there was such an accumulation of “mental toxins” that could not be cleared in a short time. What makes our player a genius, however, are small but special elements, that require constant stimulation. Right now, after healing, what Ronaldo needed was to play in official matches. He needed to get back his agility in the basic movements, and then, once he had found his self-confidence, try out those actions and the harmony that make him the unique champion he is. We might say he needed a running-in before he could step on the accelerator.” Which was not easy, however, because from Inter, a great team whose recent past has been somewhat stormy, people expect a lot and on every level; and it isn’t easy, in a tournament that can become frenetic and where the only thing that counts is winning, to find a place for a player who is striving to find his condition and to wait patiently for him to progress. From Ronaldo people have come to expect uniqueness at all costs. But there is no mathematical formula to guarantee the results. “Almost nobody seems to realize that in order to find oneself completely at these quality standards, one has to put together a number of intangible features and characteristics that depend exclusively on one’s inner balance. Ronaldo is currently in normal conditions, but not conditions as we understand them. He is certainly in normal athletic conditions, but champions of his rank are expected to provide excellency as the normal thing. “Then there are comments, especially from the pundits, that make me want to laugh. For example they say that he’s afraid of tackles and that he often pulls back his leg. If one notices that in him, it’s because there are a dozen television cameras following his every move around the field. But fear of receiving a kick or of ferocious tackling is something that Ronnie shares with every football player. Indeed, he may have less fear for these aspects of the game than he does for fast accelerations or for sprinting over short distances. That would be because of the kind of accident that happened to him, which was unsolicited and occurred without anyone else touching him. So there’s no doubt that for Ronald testing his own capacities has been more of a problem than the presumed avoidance of rough challenges by adversaries.” “Doctor Combi, one last thing. During these long months away from the fields, the mental component of the rehabilitation period has had a fundamental importance. It’s hard to imagine what Ronaldo may have felt, or thought, and above all on what certainties he could assume his future to be in line with his past. What would you say have been his strong points, from a psychological viewpoint?” “We must certainly acknowledge him with having an exceptional intelligence in accepting to wait patiently for over a year before demanding high-level performance of the leg that was operated. He has also accepted unbearably long forecasts which were not supported by the possibility of surgical operations having guaranteed results. He has shown to be a champion in that too: knowing how to wait for the right moment before starting to make up for the lost time. If you’ll pass a somewhat exaggerated comparison, and bearing in mind the mental aspects more than anything else, the “disease” that Ronaldo had to face might correspond to a normal person being struck with leukaemia. Not a form that doctors know how to cure, but a form for which the cure has to be checked at very step. For Ronaldo playing football is a passion, but it is also his job. During the period of his injury he was prevented from doing what he loves most. In my opinion that is where he’s been great: in facing hell with a smile, and also in getting beyond all the mean things, mainly due to the general ignorance, that were daily printed about him, sometimes just in order to fill in a newspaper page, or just to have, for good or ill, something to say about him. That’s why, from a psychological point of view, I’d like to call Ronaldo’ performance spectacular, and you can print that...” And we’ll be looking forward to more of the same, because the performance has just begun.

(trad. Interpres sas - Giussano)