The World Cup Final of 2002 was Ronaldo’s (the old Brazilian one) finest hour in football.
Having been famously off-colour four years earlier when Brazil lost to a Zinedine Zidane-inspired France in Paris, Ronaldo bagged both of his country’s goals against Germany, enough to fire them to victory.
As well as demonstrating that he was one of the greatest strikers ever to have graced a football field, Ronaldo also showed the world that he has a quite unusual taste in hairstyles.
Until now, nobody had really known or bothered to question why Ronaldo decided to shave all but the front of his head for the tournament in Japan and South Korea. If they did, it certainly wasn’t common knowledge.
Now though, after the 40-year-old spoke to ESPN Brazil, we’ve learned that Ronaldo opted for the haircut in order to deflect attention away from pre-tournament concerns about his fitness.
“My groin was hurting,” the former Real Madrid and Inter Milan man revealed. “I was only at 60%. So I shaved my head.”
“Everybody was only talking about my injury. When I arrived in training with this haircut everybody stopped talking about the injury.”
Clearly, it worked a treat.
Catch up with this week’s episode of 888sport Football Friday Live
