Drake x Cristiano Ronaldo: When To Say When

To have your whole legacy and status built off one thing. To accumulate wealth and fame so inconceivable to those who idolise you that you live almost outside the bounds of reality. To be so legendary and accomplish everything you dared to dream. To have that all, then have what made you so revered gradually taken from you with the power to do very little about it - that’s torture.

Like with any great, there comes a point where their powers eventually wane and the world moves past them as mother nature takes a hold. Part of life is accepting that you had your time and now others are having theirs. But some people can’t do that. Some people need to cling onto that notion that they are still amazing at something because without that, what are they? If you put everything into this desire of being so great, you’re going to have a hard time accepting the fact that you aren’t anymore - and so you try your utmost to keep that image alive, not realising that you’re jeopardising your own legacy in the process.

To me, that’s why Drake and Cristiano Ronaldo refuse to give in to what everyone else already knows. They exist at such an infallible level of humanity that they don’t seem to care for our opinion on them. But at the same time, they seem so infatuated with themselves and how they’re perceived as great that they refuse to step out of the way of the spotlight. They are just doing what they’re doing because they don’t know how to do anything else. Should they care about our opinion? Absolutely not. Nobody said they had to. But by not hanging up the boots or stepping out of the spotlight, they’re dismantling all they worked so hard for.

Ronaldo hasn’t been good for 5 years now. But in his head he still is. His constant refusal to not be the star of the show has come at the cost of how we conceive him and likely how he will be remembered as well as Portugal’s World Cup hopes. Before the turn of the decade, the consensus amongst football fans was that it was him and Messi as the two greatest we’ve ever seen at the sport. Since then, Messi has gone on to do what he’s done and Ronaldo has slid further down people’s list with every sad performance he musters in the major international tournaments. Now he’s below Maradona, Pele, Cruyff and maybe even more. In The Athletic’s list of the 20 greatest footballers of all time, (I’m not saying The Athletic’s word is bond) he ranked 5th.

The fact that he’s now considered to be lower down in many people’s lists despite being one of the two active footballers in many people’s lists shows that he’s only hurting himself by not giving in to the forces of retirement. It’s as though he’s still playing with a point to prove, like there was anyone out there who doubted his legendary status at the top of the football world. Now he’s just playing himself into a hole.

When Drake released ICEMAN in May this year, most fans hoped it would be an introspective, unrelenting and uncatering answer to the rumours and criticism that circulated the Canadian’s rapper's name. Rumours and criticism which became more vicious during and after his unsuccessful rap beef with Kendrick Lamar, which the most optimistic Drake fans will admit he lost.

But lying in the album, away from a handful of songs - was nothing of the sort. It was the final nail in the coffin that the Drake of 10 years ago had departed and this new iteration was all about the chart-topping and the club bouncing. It hardly addressed the Kendrick debacle. When it did, it was in the form of just more subliminal disses and commitment to the lie that he in fact did not lose the beef. It was immature, not introspective. And away from the core Drake loyalists, it alienated quite a few music fans who thought the old Drake might’ve still been there, lying there himself. Unfortunately, he’s gone now.

Because there was once a time where Drake’s releases became etched into the fabric of modern hip-hop as unanimous classics. The solo run which began with Take Care and ended after More Life features a series of successive albums which easily puts him in a very select list of artists who’ve been able to produce such quality over 4 albums. Though some fans will argue his more recent music is of a similar level, if not better standard, the majority of music fans will have a hard time hearing it.

The 6 God used to be held in such high regard due to his willingness to be so transparent and vulnerable in a genre which celebrated gimmicks and caricatures. His self-awareness and over-sharing humanised him, made fans relate to him. But now he’s gone from one extreme to the other as his cadence and messages have done a complete 180 and Drake constantly embarks on tales of his mob ties and criminal associates. He seems desperate now to appear as the opposite of what he once was as he struggles to decipher between who he is and wants to be. There was once a time where that conflict never existed and that was when his best music was being released.

Drake’s reputation amongst the critics and hardcore hiphop fans has taken hit after hit with the more music he’s put out ever since Certified Lover Boy. His reluctance to contain any substance behind his words now and instead replace it with innuendos and riddles regarding how rich and accessible he is, has made him inauthentic in the eyes of many. He’s out of touch and that became abundantly clear after he felt no need to address the blue whale in the room during ICEMAN.

Both Ronaldo and Drake, though nobody’s disputing the fact they’re legends - are now actively tarnishing their legacy with their refusal to give up the limelight. Nobody is suggesting retirement, but maybe just some self-awareness wouldn’t go amiss. Drake’s releasing music at a rate he hasn’t ever been in his career and yet his stock only falls. Ronaldo’s desire to not retire from international football is hurting his team and his country as he still starts games he has no reason to be starting. But as said before, as long as they’re fuelling their own ego and their own image of themselves, does anything else truly matter?

When Jay-Z retired in 2005, he did so with merely 10 years in the game behind him. But he had nothing left to prove. Instead he could sit back and release music, jump on features and be the guy everyone admired when the time was right. His image upheld and his reverence only became stronger becomes he was able to basically control the narrative around him with incredibly well-timed releases.

Eric Cantona retired from football at the age of thirty after apparently falling out of love with the game. The result of that is that because our last recollection of him on a football pitch was when he was at his undeniable best, his legend becomes more enamoured by nothing but the power of nostalgia.

So when you retire at your worst and when everybody remembers you not for your greatness but your desperation to prove you were still great when you obviously weren’t, it leaves a sour taste in the mouth. It discredits all that you once were. But to do that you need to get away from your own ego and realise there’s nothing left to prove.

Being at the level of greatness that Ronaldo and Drake find themselves at is as much as a curse as it is a blessing. Because when you’re so used to millions of people singing your praises and making you feel like you can do no wrong, it becomes extremely hard to look in the mirror and see who you actually are.