Why Real Madrid gave Cristiano Ronaldo a 5-year contract even though he’s declining

For years, Cristiano Ronaldo has been one of the best players on the face of the earth. Love him or loathe him, that fact is beyond question. Fantastically talented, the only player who can claim to match Ronaldo for skill and effectiveness on the pitch during those years was Lionel Messi, and which player was the best was always a matter of significant and sometimes heated debate.

As always with Ronaldo, the numbers are ridiculous, and the self-confidence is astonishing. Real Madrid’s No. 7 has signed a new five-year contract with the club, and reports suggest that his wages will be staying fixed at around $365,000 a week (for English readers, post-Brexit, this amounts to around ... £365,000 a week!). That’s just base salary, though -- he’ll make much more in bonuses as long as he continues to play well and Real Madrid wins trophies.

The man himself is looking even further into the future than those five years:

What I most want is to continue enjoying the years I have left to play. I still have 10 years.

And though he did sound a note of caution ...

No-one knows what the future holds.

… he contradicted himself immediately.

I’m going to be here for another five years, but let it be known this will not be my last contract. I have said many times that I carry this club in my heart, it is part of me and it is a special time in my life. Of course I would like to end my career at this club. I want to be here for many years to come. I want to continue rewriting history at this club.

And Real Madrid president Florentino Pérez approved this message:

We want to be together for many years to come.

Lately, though, it’s started to feel like something has changed with Ronaldo, and not for the better -- he’s been less involved or as consistently effective in matches, he hasn’t always had the same ruthless swagger, and there’s honestly times when you can forget he’s even on the pitch. It’s as though he’s starting to hit the downward slope of his career, and if Ronaldo is starting to decline, then that could be bad news for a Real Madrid team who still seem heavily reliant on their aging star, to the point that they gave him this massive contract extension.

There’s no denying that Ronaldo has reached his peak. At his age, with the number of games he’s played, it’s extremely unlikely that he gets better. Looking at the pattern of every other iron man attacking player’s career, he’ll probably decline significantly before this new contract expires, and the idea that he could continue to be a top contributor for Real Madrid at 36 or older is difficult to conceive of.

While Ronaldo is “only” 31, an age considered to be late in a player’s prime years before any serious decline sets in, that doesn’t account for just how long he’s been playing heavy amounts of first-team football. He was 17 years old when he became a starter for Sporting Clube de Portugal in 2002, and he was 18 when he transferred to Manchester United the next summer. He’s been going all-out for club and country since then -- meaning Ronaldo has had 14-plus years of heavy minutes, high intensity, and monumental pressure to deal with.

In total, Ronaldo has played just shy of 700 professional games of club football, along with making 135 appearances for Portugal. That means that he has already played more games than most professionals manage at any level, and is starting to get on for the numbers that we associate with the true freaks; Ryan Giggs, Roberto Carlos, and Ronaldo’s compatriot Luis Figo all played around 1,000 top-level games. Five more years of 40-game seasons will put him in their company, while 10 would make him the busiest outfield player of all time.

Even for an athlete as phenomenal as Ronaldo is, that’s a lot of miles on his legs, so it would be unsurprising if he started a steep decline at a younger age than most top players, especially after the knee injury he suffered in the Euro 2016 final that kept him out of action for months.

While there’s no precise pattern with outliers such as these, it’s generally the case that any player targeting such extreme longevity will have to change their circumstances, themselves, or both. That’s how it goes, when the legs get heavier and the kids come up from behind. So Giggs reinvented himself as a kind of utility midfielder and elder statesman, while at the same accepting that he wasn’t going to be first choice every week. Figo left Real Madrid for Internazionale and became a squad player before retirement. And when Roberto Carlos left the Bernabéu in 2009 he wound his career down with Fenerbahce, Corinthians, and Anzhi Makhachkala, retired in 2012, and then made a brief playing comeback in 2015 with the Delhi Dynamos.

That Ronaldo’s game has changed as he’s got older is clear to the eye: He’s developed from a winger who did tricks to a winger that scored goals, then from there into a striker who would start on the left wing. Recently, broader of shoulder and heavier of leg, he dribbles less, touches the ball less, and has developed into a kind of floating finishing specialist. Yet he scores just as heavily as ever: 61 goals in 2014-15, 51 goals in 2015-16. Even this season, in which he’s looked underpowered since making a late return thanks to his summertime injury, he’s picked up seven in 12.

If he can keep scoring at that rate for another 10 years, then presumably Real Madrid will keep their place near the top of La Liga, pick up another couple of Champions Leagues, and all will be well. The basic laws of the universe and human decay suggest, however, that he will slow up at some point, and the precedents of nearly every other footballer in history suggests that this point is coming up soon. And the precedents of Ronaldo’s own path to the top — this is a man with his own feature film, his own museum, his own range of footwear — suggests that he isn’t planning on becoming a bit-part player any time over the next five to 10 years.

In essence, this contract is a game of chicken. Ronaldo’s camp are betting that Real Madrid will tolerate any decline, however precipitous, for the sake of everything else that CR7 can bring to the table, and for the sake of keeping him happy. And Madrid are betting that his decline, when it comes, can either be managed or, more likely, will end with Ronaldo rejecting a lessening in status and accepting a colossal check from China.

What’s clear, though, is that Real Madrid need to start planning for what comes next, and they need to do it now. Ronaldo is still capable of moments of brilliance, but they’re starting to become rarer and not always as impressive as they once were. Take his hat trick against Deportivo Alaves in October -- a hat trick looks impressive, but one was a penalty, one was a wild deflection, and one came when the match was long, long over and Deportivo had all but stopped putting effort into the game.

For all that, though, it’s hard to shake the feeling when you watch Real Madrid play this season that they’re always waiting for a big moment to come from Ronaldo, that they need some of his brilliance in order to propel them to the results that they need. With the way he’s struggled, though, that doesn’t seem like the best plan, even if they are getting results and wins almost in spite of how flat Ronaldo has been most of the time this year.

The best way for Real to move past that would be for someone else to step up and take on that go-to-guy role that Ronaldo has filled since he arrived at the Bernabéu -- something that’s easier said than done. It had been hoped after a strong summer leading Wales and an equally impressive start to his season when Ronaldo was out that Gareth Bale would step up as a leader for Real Madrid, but ever since Ronaldo returned from injury Bale has looked happy to play second fiddle to the Portuguese star. Toni Kroos has easily been Real’s best and most consistent player this season, but his skill set and the role that he plays isn’t one that lends itself to putting a team on his back and taking over matches. Ditto Luka Modric, who has unfortunately been fairly inconsistent this year.

So who else is there? Karim Benzema has never been that guy. James Rodríguez doesn’t seem like it either, for all of his talent. It seems like Real Madrid will probably have to keep searching the transfer market — the possibilities of Antoine Griezmann or Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang spring to mind, though whether or not they can fill Ronaldo’s inspirational shoes is anyone’s guess — or hope their academy gets lucky and develops someone who can fill that role. That’s a tough thing to face, but when you’re trying to find a new leader for your team to fill the gulf left by Ronaldo, it’s a tall order to ask for.

Of course, the better question to ask is if Ronaldo even can be fully replaced. The answer is that he more than likely cannot, at least not by one player. Real Madrid would more than likely have to make several changes and improvements, try to bring in a couple of high-level players and make tactical changes in order to truly fill the hole left once Ronaldo finally calls it quits or truly can no longer play at the level we’re used to from him. They’d have to approach such a task carefully, as trying to make too drastic a change or upsetting the balance of the rest of the team could have disastrous results that would take much longer to come back from, especially given that they’re committing such huge financial resources to Ronaldo at the same time.

Of course, while giving a five-year, squillion-dollar contract to a 31-year-old approaching the event horizon of their career is clearly a ridiculous thing to do, it is also a very Real Madrid thing to do. This is a club for which the sporting aspect of any decision is just one factor to be weighed in the balance, that for brand reasons plumped for David Beckham’s beautiful face and twinkling smile over Ronaldinho’s beautiful feet and goofy grin. According to Forbes, Ronaldo’s social media presence is “a tick behind Taylor Swift for the biggest among all celebrities,” and generated a total of $176 million in value for his various partners in 2015-16. That’s “seven times more than any other athlete,” and it’s probably worth noting that he’s reportedly set to renew his deal with Nike as well.

And besides, why not give him the money? He’s already getting paid a lot, and keeping Ronaldo happy is a good way to keep the rest of the squad happy. While Real Madrid are looking for their new totemic, inspirational figurehead for the team, they need to keep the one they have in the team and happy, even if he’s not as strong a player as he once was. It’s a sound bit of reasoning, even if Ronaldo is very expensive and increasingly risky.

In the end, though, we’re talking about the end of an era. If Cristiano Ronaldo really isn’t Cristiano Ronaldo anymore, that will be a sad thing. No matter which side of the argument you fall on as to whether or not he’s the greatest player of the current era of the game, it’s impossible to say that he isn’t enormously talented, and has had a huge impact on the sport. The day Ronaldo hangs up his boots will be one worth mourning, and hopefully that won’t happen for a long, long time to come.