Ronaldo once said that all his success is for his mother. Mother is his refuge and the greatest gift he has.
In September 2021, an article about the love of the second richest male player in the world Cristiano Ronaldo with his mother appeared on Quora, attracting great attention. In the article there is a passage:
“A reporter asked Cristiano Ronaldo: Why are you still living with your mother when you’re old?
Cristiano Ronaldo replied: My mother raised me, sacrificed her life for me. She sleeps hungry so I can eat at night. We have no money. My mother works 7 days a week and in the evenings a part-time cleaning job to help me buy soccer practice balls, so that I can live my dream of becoming a footballer. All my success is dedicated to her. And as long as I’m alive, she’ll always be by my side and have everything I can give her. My mother is my refuge and greatest gift. I think money doesn’t make rich people. In fact, there are some people who are so poor that all they have is money. True wealth is found in gratitude for life’s gifts and blessings.”
For Ronaldo, mother is everything. Without the caring efforts of Mrs. Dolores, there would not be Ronaldo’s success today.
The mother played a huge role in Ronaldo’s career (Image: Getty)
Dark childhood in a poor fishing village
His mother, Maria Dolores Spinola Do Santos da Aveiro, was born on December 31, 1954 in the fishing port of Canical, one of the poorest areas of the island of Madeira. In Dolores’ memory, her childhood was a series of days in hell on earth.
Ronaldo’s grandmother died of a heart attack at the age of 37, leaving a family of 5 children and an irresponsible husband.
Ronaldo’s grandfather, Viveiro, has almost no steady income. Instead of trying to raise 5 human children, he only gave love to 1 child. The remaining four, including Mrs. Dolores, were sent to a local convent. There, she lived in loneliness with nostalgia for her parents mixed with terrible punishments such as spanking, weeding for hours in the sun, or having her head covered with a sack.
“I tried to escape from there twice but failed,” she recalls. Even the convent that adopted Dolores always classified her as a group of children with rebellious behavior and abnormal minds.
Dolores always takes good care of Ronaldo’s extended family (Image: Getty)
At the age of 9, she was returned to her family. At this time, Mr. Viveiro was remarried to a woman who also had five children of her own. Thought that life outside the monastery would change, but no. She was constantly beaten by her father and stepmother.
Dolores ran away from his own home many times but was brought back by the police. In fact, the father and stepmother did not want this child back. Mr. Viveiro also wanted to put his daughter in a center for children with intellectual disabilities. The director of the center refused to accept the scolding: Why did you act like that? His daughter is completely normal.
At the age of 13, Dolores was expelled from school to stay at home to help support his family. Every day, she has to get up at 5 am to knit baskets and bring them to the market to sell. All the money accumulated was held by the stepmother. Bored with a humiliating life, Dolores always wants to find a way out.
Great Mother
At the age of 18, she married Jose Dinis Aveiro (later Ronaldo’s father) and had 3 children when she was just 22 years old. The turning point came for the family when she became pregnant with Ronaldo in 1985. “He was the child I wanted to get rid of,” Maria Dolores said in her autobiography, Mother Courage, published in 2014.
The desire to have an abortion failed, she finally decided to give birth to Ronaldo. In order to support a family of 4 children and an alcoholic husband, Ronaldo’s mother and sister had to work as a kitchen assistant all day to earn money. That’s why the youngest Ronaldo had to follow his mother all day.
Attached to the kitchen environment, but that can’t stop the skinny boy’s dream of playing football. Any object can become Ronaldo’s ball. He always comes up with different ways to handle his own “balls”.
In the afternoon of the youngest son, Mrs. Dolores deducts a little money every day from the family’s money to go to the market, save it and buy a proper ball for her son. “I can still feel the boy’s joy when he receives the gift, emanating from his eyes.”
Do not understand much about football, but when bringing home the first meaningful gift for Ronaldo, Mrs. Dolores believed that at least the boy would change his life starting from that ball. She always supported Cristiano to play football, then manually did all the housework so that his son could focus all of his time on his passion for playing football.
In every glorious moment, Ronaldo wants to share with his mother (Image: Internet)
Even when Ronaldo and his wife gave birth to a child, she also took care of CR7’s small family. It can be said that without the silent and noble sacrifices of his mother, Ronaldo certainly would not have been able to achieve the success he is today.
So he always finds a way to make up for his mother. He always took his mother with him on a long trip on a private jet, buying her expensive gifts. Every month, Ronaldo pays £4,800 just for Mrs. Dolores and her friends to fly to Cape Verde to swim. Ronaldo once bought his mother a car worth 100,000 pounds. A few years later, Mrs Dolores was seen posing with another brand new car worth £250,000. In addition, there are branded items from the world’s leading fashion stores.
