Twenty-one summers ago, a superstar called Ronaldo moved from Spanish football to Serie A in a transfer the buying club regarded as a watershed moment in their journey to the summit of the game. The new man came clutching a Ballon d’Or. Alas, he would spend much of his time in Italy clutching an injured knee.
That man was the other Ronaldo, the Brazilian, or the real Ronaldo as some observers of a certain generation still refer to him, mindful that just because the second decade of this millenium has been wonderfully entertained by a gifted player with the same name, we shouldn't forget how thrilling a striker Ronaldo Luis Nazario de Lima was in his heyday. Or rather, in his heydays. He would come back from the injuries that troubled his time with Inter Milan quite heroically, once he joined Real Madrid in 2002, five years after he had moved from Barcelona to Inter.
The fact that Ronaldo Mark I played his most carefree football outside Italy, as a 20 year old at Barca, and then as a centre-forward carefully rationing his bursts of speed with Madrid, tells its own story. The Brazilian Ronaldo - who announced on Tuesday he had recovered from a worrying episode of ill-health that put him in hospital over the weekend - suffered damaging knee problems while trying to twist through tight Serie A defences in Italy, where his body took a fearful, wearying battering.
WATCH: Crazy Ronaldo skills
At that time, the Italian top flight was hugely prestigious, but also had a reputation for cultivating the toughest man-markers. The Brazilian Ronaldo, with his adhesive ball control, and a combination of power and speed the young France striker Kylian Mbappe sometimes brings to mind, put fear into the most accomplished of them. The likes of Alessandro Nesta and Paolo Maldini, or Juventus's Paolo Montero, or Parma’s steely sentries of the era, Lilian Thuram and Fabio Cannavaro, combatted his brilliance with muscle.
Serie A's reputation as the best league in the world has fallen since then, but its pride in its tough-as-teak defenders remains. The latest Ronaldo to arrive in Italy, amid great fanfare following his transfer from Real Madrid to Juventus, may be a more mature footballer that his namesake was in 1997, but he is likely to find the attention he draws from certain markers suffocating. He will have looked at the fixture list for his new adventure with Juventus and perhaps noted that, after Saturday's debut at Chievo, Lazio come to Turin the following weekend, armed with a couple of seasoned combatants in their back line, in the shape of Senad Lulic and Martin Caceres, who kept Ronaldo very quiet a few weekends ago when Uruguay knocked Portugal out of the World Cup.
Ronaldo's good luck is that Leo Bonucci, perhaps the best of current Italian centre-backs, has rejoined Juventus from Milan, though the AC Milan manager Gennaro Gattuso will be growling in Juve’s direction over the coming months. The Milan-Juve rivalry has an added dimension now: Gonzalo Higuain's loan move from Juve to Milan for the season ahead is a direct consequence of Ronaldo’s landing at Juve. Higuain has some points to prove.
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Read more:
Ancelotti, Kluivert and five men to watch during the 2018/19 Serie A season
In pictures: Cristiano Ronaldo scores on Juventus 'debut'
Cristiano Ronaldo sparks Uefa Champions League dreams after Juventus arrival
Superstar Cristiano Ronaldo says players his age usually go to leagues in countries such as China and Qatar
Ian Hawkey: Juventus prove their pulling power and offer Ronaldo a new platform to go after more trophies
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Ronaldo may well find goals are harder to eke out in Italy for even the best strikers. In the last nine years, the Pichichi, the award for the leading scorer in Spain's Primera Liga, has always gone to a man - and mostly that's been Lionel Messi or Ronaldo - with more than 30 goals over the campaign; in Serie A the Capocannoniere, the equivalent, has only once in that period scored more than 30. That was Higuain, for Napoli, when he struck 36 goals in 2015/16.
Napoli pushed Juventus close last season in the title race, and played perhaps the most thrilling football of anybody in the country. With Carlo Ancelotti replacing the departed Maurizio Sarri as manager, Napoli should be trusted to preserve their attacking emphasis, although with fixtures against Lazio, Milan, Fiorentina within their first month and a trip to Juventus on matchday seven, the new man has a demanding lift-off.
Other obstacles in the way of Ronaldo's claiming a scudetto to go alongside his Premier League and Liga titles? Roma, Uefa Champions League semi-finalists last season, have been active in the transfer market, bringing the enigmatic Javier Pastore back to Serie A from Paris Saint-Germain, and hiring World Cup winner Steven Nzonzi, though they may miss goalkeeper Alisson Becker and midfielder Radja Nainggolan. Nainggolan has taken his dynamism to an ambitious Inter, whose squad looks as equipped as anybody’s to get in the way of the predicted march of Juventus - and the second great Ronaldo to pitch up in Italy - to an eighth successive league crown.
The National's picks
4.35pm: Tilal Al Khalediah
5.10pm: Continous
5.45pm: Raging Torrent
6.20pm: West Acre
7pm: Flood Zone
7.40pm: Straight No Chaser
8.15pm: Romantic Warrior
8.50pm: Calandogan
9.30pm: Forever Young
A MINECRAFT MOVIE
Director: Jared Hess
Starring: Jack Black, Jennifer Coolidge, Jason Momoa
Rating: 3/5
THE BIO
Born: Mukalla, Yemen, 1979
Education: UAE University, Al Ain
Family: Married with two daughters: Asayel, 7, and Sara, 6
Favourite piece of music: Horse Dance by Naseer Shamma
Favourite book: Science and geology
Favourite place to travel to: Washington DC
Best advice you’ve ever been given: If you have a dream, you have to believe it, then you will see it.
The smuggler
Eldarir had arrived at JFK in January 2020 with three suitcases, containing goods he valued at $300, when he was directed to a search area.
Officers found 41 gold artefacts among the bags, including amulets from a funerary set which prepared the deceased for the afterlife.
Also found was a cartouche of a Ptolemaic king on a relief that was originally part of a royal building or temple.
The largest single group of items found in Eldarir’s cases were 400 shabtis, or figurines.
Khouli conviction
Khouli smuggled items into the US by making false declarations to customs about the country of origin and value of the items.
According to Immigration and Customs Enforcement, he provided “false provenances which stated that [two] Egyptian antiquities were part of a collection assembled by Khouli's father in Israel in the 1960s” when in fact “Khouli acquired the Egyptian antiquities from other dealers”.
He was sentenced to one year of probation, six months of home confinement and 200 hours of community service in 2012 after admitting buying and smuggling Egyptian antiquities, including coffins, funerary boats and limestone figures.
For sale
A number of other items said to come from the collection of Ezeldeen Taha Eldarir are currently or recently for sale.
Their provenance is described in near identical terms as the British Museum shabti: bought from Salahaddin Sirmali, "authenticated and appraised" by Hossen Rashed, then imported to the US in 1948.
- An Egyptian Mummy mask dating from 700BC-30BC, is on offer for £11,807 ($15,275) online by a seller in Mexico
- A coffin lid dating back to 664BC-332BC was offered for sale by a Colorado-based art dealer, with a starting price of $65,000
- A shabti that was on sale through a Chicago-based coin dealer, dating from 1567BC-1085BC, is up for $1,950
Biography
Favourite book: Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance
Holiday choice: Anything Disney-related
Proudest achievement: Receiving a presidential award for foreign services.
Family: Wife and three children.
Like motto: You always get what you ask for, the universe listens.
The six points:
1. Ministers should be in the field, instead of always at conferences
2. Foreign diplomacy must be left to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and International Co-operation
3. Emiratisation is a top priority that will have a renewed push behind it
4. The UAE's economy must continue to thrive and grow
5. Complaints from the public must be addressed, not avoided
6. Have hope for the future, what is yet to come is bigger and better than before
South Africa squad
Faf du Plessis (captain), Hashim Amla, Temba Bavuma, Quinton de Kock (wicketkeeper), Theunis de Bruyn, AB de Villiers, Dean Elgar, Heinrich Klaasen (wicketkeeper), Keshav Maharaj, Aiden Markram, Morne Morkel, Wiaan Mulder, Lungi Ngidi, Vernon Philander and Kagiso Rabada.
The specs
Engine: Four electric motors, one at each wheel
Power: 579hp
Torque: 859Nm
Transmission: Single-speed automatic
Price: From Dh825,900
On sale: Now
The%20specs
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CONFIRMED%20LINE-UP
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In numbers: PKK’s money network in Europe
Germany: PKK collectors typically bring in $18 million in cash a year – amount has trebled since 2010
Revolutionary tax: Investigators say about $2 million a year raised from ‘tax collection’ around Marseille
Extortion: Gunman convicted in 2023 of demanding $10,000 from Kurdish businessman in Stockholm
Drug trade: PKK income claimed by Turkish anti-drugs force in 2024 to be as high as $500 million a year
Denmark: PKK one of two terrorist groups along with Iranian separatists ASMLA to raise “two-digit million amounts”
Contributions: Hundreds of euros expected from typical Kurdish families and thousands from business owners
TV channel: Kurdish Roj TV accounts frozen and went bankrupt after Denmark fined it more than $1 million over PKK links in 2013
Mercer, the investment consulting arm of US services company Marsh & McLennan, expects its wealth division to at least double its assets under management (AUM) in the Middle East as wealth in the region continues to grow despite economic headwinds, a company official said.
Mercer Wealth, which globally has $160 billion in AUM, plans to boost its AUM in the region to $2-$3bn in the next 2-3 years from the present $1bn, said Yasir AbuShaban, a Dubai-based principal with Mercer Wealth.
“Within the next two to three years, we are looking at reaching $2 to $3 billion as a conservative estimate and we do see an opportunity to do so,” said Mr AbuShaban.
Mercer does not directly make investments, but allocates clients’ money they have discretion to, to professional asset managers. They also provide advice to clients.
“We have buying power. We can negotiate on their (client’s) behalf with asset managers to provide them lower fees than they otherwise would have to get on their own,” he added.
Mercer Wealth’s clients include sovereign wealth funds, family offices, and insurance companies among others.
From its office in Dubai, Mercer also looks after Africa, India and Turkey, where they also see opportunity for growth.
Wealth creation in Middle East and Africa (MEA) grew 8.5 per cent to $8.1 trillion last year from $7.5tn in 2015, higher than last year’s global average of 6 per cent and the second-highest growth in a region after Asia-Pacific which grew 9.9 per cent, according to consultancy Boston Consulting Group (BCG). In the region, where wealth grew just 1.9 per cent in 2015 compared with 2014, a pickup in oil prices has helped in wealth generation.
BCG is forecasting MEA wealth will rise to $12tn by 2021, growing at an annual average of 8 per cent.
Drivers of wealth generation in the region will be split evenly between new wealth creation and growth of performance of existing assets, according to BCG.
Another general trend in the region is clients’ looking for a comprehensive approach to investing, according to Mr AbuShaban.
“Institutional investors or some of the families are seeing a slowdown in the available capital they have to invest and in that sense they are looking at optimizing the way they manage their portfolios and making sure they are not investing haphazardly and different parts of their investment are working together,” said Mr AbuShaban.
Some clients also have a higher appetite for risk, given the low interest-rate environment that does not provide enough yield for some institutional investors. These clients are keen to invest in illiquid assets, such as private equity and infrastructure.
“What we have seen is a desire for higher returns in what has been a low-return environment specifically in various fixed income or bonds,” he said.
“In this environment, we have seen a de facto increase in the risk that clients are taking in things like illiquid investments, private equity investments, infrastructure and private debt, those kind of investments were higher illiquidity results in incrementally higher returns.”
The Abu Dhabi Investment Authority, one of the largest sovereign wealth funds, said in its 2016 report that has gradually increased its exposure in direct private equity and private credit transactions, mainly in Asian markets and especially in China and India. The authority’s private equity department focused on structured equities owing to “their defensive characteristics.”
Farasan Boat: 128km Away from Anchorage
Director: Mowaffaq Alobaid
Stars: Abdulaziz Almadhi, Mohammed Al Akkasi, Ali Al Suhaibani
Rating: 4/5
The specs
Engine: four-litre V6 and 3.5-litre V6 twin-turbo
Transmission: six-speed and 10-speed
Power: 271 and 409 horsepower
Torque: 385 and 650Nm
Price: from Dh229,900 to Dh355,000
