He is footballs narcissus the one man show, Ladies & Gentlemen the one and only - CR7!

I wish I wrote this article, its actually taken from the times online website and it sums up Mr. Cristiano Ronaldo to perfection -the article was written by journalist Simon Barnes & in turn, I took it off my friend's blog (big shout out to Seamie Dunne).

"Cristiano. It's been great. Well, it hasn't, actually. But it's been nearly great and that's almost as good, isn't it? And as Ronaldo turns his back on a great team with a great manager and goes off to join The Me Show at Real Madrid, we can reflect on a man who has greatness within him but cannot face up to the implications.

He brought us brilliance and, with it, a perfectly astounding silliness. He brought us extraordinary courage, he also brought us a vanity so intense that it inspired physical revulsion. He made himself both a star and a laughing stock.

He brought goals of staggering range, some from raw power, some from finesse, some from profound footballing intelligence. He has also dived, faked and simulated, and sought to get opponents sent off at every opportunity. He has done wonderful things; he has also gloated and whined and winked.

He is the most skilful footballer on the planet, yet he is just as famous for hair gel and chest wax. He has created some stunning victories, but at their high point it has almost always been himself that he has celebrated. He is football's Narcissus, for ever peering into the pool of sporting history to admire only his own reflection.

He has the seeds of greatness in him, but I have my doubts about germination. Pelé, Maradona, Cruyff, Beckenbauer: where does Ronaldo fit in with this quartet of greatness? He doesn't, and nor is he likely to. He has chosen to swap the discipline and purpose of Sir Alex Ferguson's Manchester United to be indulged and idolised at Real, at the whim of the megalomaniacal president, Florentino Pérez.

There is a fair amount in common between the quartet of greatness and Ronaldo. All have tremendous football skills and great footballing intelligence. All have created great victories. Johan Cruyff was nearly as temperamental as Ronaldo (he sulked his way out of going to the 1978 World Cup) and Maradona infinitely more so. All have a very clear idea of their own place in the dominance hierarchy.

But there is a crucial difference and it comes in the T word. All four of the genuinely great players had the crucial ability to create a team around them, so that each member played beyond his normal abilities. Each created a great team, or even great teams, with himself at the centre of it.

Ronaldo has failed to do this and shown no sign of wanting to do. For him, the prime purpose of team-mates is either to serve him or to get blamed for failing to do so. For the great quartet, other players were subordinate colleagues; for Ronaldo, other players are extras in Ronaldo: The Movie.

There are a million reasons why Ronaldo could be great - this goal and that goal, this pass and that pass, this match and that match, and above all, that season. In 2007-08 he scored 42 goals and United won the Barclays Premier League and the Champions League. It was, and probably will always be, the season of his life.

But how did that season end? I was there to see the penalty shoot-out at the Champions League final against Chelsea in Moscow. Up stepped Ronaldo to take his penalty - and what an absurd, affected little disaster it was, a pause of devastating length in the run-up (surely ungentlemanly conduct?), then the miss.

This was Ronaldo reaching for his moment and dropping it; Ronaldo looking destiny in the face and blinking. He was not the man he thought he was, he was precisely the man many of us thought he was.

But the courage, the courage - you could almost love him for his courage. He arrived in England in 2003, an 18-year-old obsessed with the step-over. The joke was that he set a world record of 376 step-overs in a match, beating the previous record of three.

And naturally, for nobody loves a smart-arse, he was kicked and clogged and clobbered in match after match. But he would get the ball back, run at the same man and then - guess what - perform half-a-dozen step-overs in quick succession, beat his man and get a decent cross in, too.

At first he was a joke, a nobody, a butterfly, proof that Fergie had really lost it this time if he thought that this show-pony was an adequate replacement for David Beckham. But he developed and carried on developing. He was not content to decorate an occasion, he wanted to seize big occasions and make them his own.

So far, so fabulous. But as the talent grew, so the flaws in it became more clear. For the fact is that football is no more about the individual genius of footballers than horse racing is about the individual genius of jockeys. The prize goes to the horse that passes the post first.

And it's teams that win trophies, not players. Before anything else, football is about teams, and that is the concept that Ronaldo has never quite grasped. A footballer, however brilliant, however exquisite, must be prepared to go slumming: track back, support colleagues, mark up at set-pieces, press defenders in their own half, win the ball back. He must also be prepared to play in a manner unsympathetic to him.

Shape, discipline, structure; these things matter. You can be the greatest centre-forward in the world but if you let the opposition centre-back score from a corner, you've failed. All four members of the quartet of greatness had a deep sense of their own specialness, but with them, it came with an immense sense of responsibility.

That is precisely what Ronaldo lacks and what's more, he increasingly resented Ferguson's attempts to force such responsibility on to him. This is unlikely to be a lesson drummed into him at Real. He will be at home in the galáctico culture, not worrying that such a culture has always been more about money than footballing success.

Will he ever find greatness? Will he ever grow up? Possibly, but in my experience, most people who grow up do so at the usual age. Besides, Ronaldo has taken a decisive step away from the things that might have made him great; that is to say, corporate responsibility and the opportunity to develop real leadership qualities under a strong manager.

Sometimes it seemed that Ronaldo's profoundly ambivalent relationship with the British public had something of racism in it - the greasy dago diver is an ancient stereotype, after all. But we have taken many wonderful foreign footballers to our bosom, including those from sworn footballing enemies such as Germany and Argentina.

No, it is Ronaldo's nature, not his nationality, that has always been indigestible. We will always feel equivocal about Ronaldo: terrific player, but ... but ... but ...
All the great gifts, all the contradictions, all the tantrums and the sulks, all these come from the same source.

For the truth of the matter is that Ronaldo fell in love with himself at first sight and it is a passion to which he has always remained faithful. He has left United, but he will always be true to Real Ronaldo, the only team he truly understands."