Samedo and Ronaldo

Red_in_SE8 · December 2015

I was totally unaware of this relationship described in today's Times.

Rory Smith meets José Semedo, the Sheffield Wednesday midfielder who calls Real Madrid’s superstar his brother
José Semedo was there when Cristiano Ronaldo threw a chair at his teacher. He was there to see his best friend use Lisbon’s underground for the first time, when he darted between the doors of the carriage because he was afraid that he would get trapped. He was there when the pair of them posed together in front of a mirror in their bedroom, comparing their nascent muscles.
For almost two decades, Semedo has counted Ronaldo as his closest friend. They first met when they were ten, at Sporting Lisbon’s academy. They grew up together, trained together, shared a room together. They still speak almost every day, even with one at Sheffield Wednesday and the other at Real Madrid. Semedo refers to him as “bro”.
That is how he talks about him, too, as a brother does, his affection betrayed not through awkward, unnecessary praise, but those stories, those shared memories, each of them recounted with a broad grin.
It disappears just once. There is one story, one memory that means so much to Semedo that it does not make him smile at all. It dates to when he was playing for Sporting’s under-14s. He and Ronaldo had spent the past three years living at Alcochete, Sporting’s hothouse of talent.
“I didn’t have a good season,” the 30-year-old says. “The club called me in and said that I would be able to stay on but that I would have to move back to my parents’ house in Setubal, about 45 minutes away, because they would give my room to someone else. I told [Ronaldo] that next year I would be living back at home, that I wouldn’t be here [at Alcochete] every day.
“He said, ‘No, if you go, I will never see you again. If you go, you will come in to training twice and that will be that. If you go, I go.’ He went to see the chief of the academy: he told him that Semedo cannot go, he will stay here with me. He said they could put an extra bed in his room and that we could share a cupboard for our clothes. And then he said what he had told me: he said that if I went, he would too.
“He was the diamond. They did everything he said. They did every possible thing they could to make him happy. So they got the extra bed, and that is what we did. I slept in his room. I owe everything I have to him. The place I am from in Setubal is not a good place for a young man. A lot of my friends from there were involved in crime. Some of them are dead now, or in jail. If I had gone back, maybe I would have stolen cars with them. He changed my life. My family, my children, my career: it is all because of him.”
Semedo is clearly enthusiastic by nature. He is happy to talk about anything, and at great speed. He cannot speak highly enough of Wednesday, where he has spent the past four years and where, given the choice, he would like to end his career. “When I finish, I will go to games as a fan,” he says.
He wants to bring the supporters “one more promotion and to take them to a cup final”, starting against Stoke City this evening in the Capital One Cup quarter-finals.
Semedo is just as animated when discussing Win the Day, the book that he has published with Sam Kotadia, his psychologist. It is not your standard footballer’s fare: it is, as Semedo says, more about psychology than sport. “The message is that things are difficult, but the more you fight, the more you will win,” he says. He also, as it happens, smells ever so slightly of candyfloss. It is not clear why that might be. Perhaps it is a by-product of being so positive all of the time.
He is at his liveliest, though, when discussing his old friend. “I remember his first training session, the first time I met him,” he says. “He was shy, skinnier than the rest of us. They introduced him as Ronaldo. We all said, ‘Ooh, that’s a good name,’ because of the Brazilian Ronaldo. By the end of that session, everyone wanted to be his friend.
“He was the best. He controlled the ball, outskilled everyone, didn’t pass the ball, scored. Oh my God. And then he spoke: he was from Madeira, and the accent there is very different. Everyone started to laugh. He had a hard time with that accent. It sounded like it was not Portuguese. We couldn’t understand. He threw a chair at a teacher once because people were laughing and they didn’t stop it.
“Lisbon was a different world for him. I took him to the Colombo shopping centre once. We took the [Metro]. He thought he had to go in quick, or the door would catch him. All of this stuff was normal for me, from Setubal, but he was scared. There was nothing like that in Madeira. So many people, so many big places. But on the pitch, he was at home.”
The pair pushed each other. They would sneak out of their rooms at night for illicit training sessions — Ronaldo strapping weights to his legs and trying to get past Semedo’s challenges — or to use the gym out of hours. “We would have to hide our arms when we came back in because it was not allowed,” Semedo says. “Then we would get back in the room, look in the mirror, and say, ‘Yes, we’re getting bigger now’. ”
Even then, Ronaldo’s competitive streak was obvious. “Some of our friends said, at one point, that I was bigger than him,” Semedo says. “He started going to the gym without calling me. He was always like that. It is in his DNA — he cannot lose. We would have races: I would set off early, then as soon as he caught me, I would stop and say I had won. He wouldn’t talk to me for days.”
Now, Semedo is laughing again. Ronaldo is still the same, he says, even if his circumstances have changed. “It is only when we are together outside his home that I remember he is a superstar,” he says. Semedo has never thought of asking for favours, though. “People say to me, ‘He has the best agent in the world, can’t he do something for you? I would not do that. I am happy. He is happy. He has already done enough for me. He changed my life.”
Ronaldo v Semedo
Madeira, Portugal Birthplace Setubal, Portugal
Forward/winger Position Midfielder
Real Madrid Club Sheffield Wednesday
123 (55 Goals) Caps None
£92.4m Combined Fees £0
£660,000 Weekly Wage £7,000-10,000
One son, Cristiano (5) Family Married with twin boys (6)