WHAT HAPPENED TO RONALDINHO? From world's best №10 to Prisoner №194 in jail!

INSIDE FOOTBALL
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2 Video Views·Jan 17, 2023
On March 6, Ronaldinho and his older brother and agent, Roberto Diasis, were imprisoned
in the Agrupaciones Specializada on suspicion of using fake passports to enter Paraguay.
During the first week of Ronaldinho's stay in prison, the warden, Vlas Veras, even organized
a jokingly called mini-tour of Ronaldinho, so that the kids could meet him for a short
while in a courtyard of the prison.
Here's the affect of the magician.
Most of these kids were too young to remember the famous victory of the Brazilian at the
2002 World Cup or victory of the Ballon d'Or in 2005.
But these meetings have ceased.
Due to the coronavirus could no longer do this, Ronaldinho enjoyed spending time with
children, the prison warden explains in an interview with Bleacher Report.
Ronaldinho remains a popular person despite his retirement in 2018.
However, when he turned 40 on March 21, the celebration turned out to be really gloomy.
A prison cell, brother and a cake brought by one of his lawyers.
What brought Ronaldinho to such a difficult life change?
Now we gonna tell you everything.
Hello everyone!
Inside Football is gonna go deeper and show you a different, previously invisible, side
of Ronaldinho's life.
Special thanks to the Bleacher Report and journalist Marcos Alves for the cool material,
the adaptation of which we are sharing.
Friends, press likes, so that as many people as possible could watch this video.
In the comments, just write your feelings after watching, we will study your thoughts
with great interest.
Well, it's time to start!
A bit of the prison atmosphere.
Prisoners had to deal with constant mosquito attacks and the risk of contracting dengue
fever and one of the three prison blocks contained dangerous criminals.
However, Ronaldinho was lucky, he managed to avoid the company of thugs.
He spent most of his time in another area with 25 inmates and, among other privileges,
had a TV in the cell.
According to Globosport, he watched Atletico win over Liverpool in the Champions League
from his cell.
In total, Ronaldinho spent 32 days in prison.
On April 8, after a fourth request from his lawyers, a Paraguayan court finally decided
to release the brothers from prison into house arrest, a ban on leaving the country and a
bail of 1.6 million dollars.
The judge relayed his ruling in a WhatsApp video call.
Ronaldinho simply answered him with his signature gesture and smile, and that shows who the
magician is.
Since then, he's been staying at Palmaroga Hotel, which costs an average of about 64
dollars per night, and the conditions there are very nice.
The hotel is located in the central part of the capital of Paraguay, Asuncion.
Just 3 kilometers away from the prison, guards constantly monitor the perimeter of the hotel.
How did one of the greatest players of all time end up in this position?
To date, 15 people have already been detained in the case, which began with fake passports
allegedly used by Ronaldinho and his brother at the entrance to Paraguay on March 4.
Since then, the investigation team has made significant progress and exposed the money-laundering.
One of Ronaldinho's lawyers, Adolfo Marin, insisted that the legendary footballer believes
that he received a passport as a gift.
He didn't know that he was committing a crime.
He is a fool.
Said Marin at the hearing.
It sounds harsh, but to some extent, fair.
While his incredible talent hypnotized his fans and made him the brightest football star
in the early 2000s, Ronaldinho was never responsible for his life and wasn't fully aware of what
was happening.
He was always so focused on the game, that when Cameroon kicked out Brazil from the 2000
Olympic Games, he didn't even know about the Golden Goal rule and didn't understand
why the match was over, recalls Diogo Oliveira, football columnist for Zero Hora, who followed
Ronaldinho throughout his career.
Ronaldinho has a reputation for being in the dark when it comes to off-the-pitch matters.
And the worst part is that it's indeed true.
He doesn't have a clue about his business.
Ronaldinho's family built a bubble for him and said, you go there and play, and let us
handle the rest.
And he was thrown inside the bubble very early, at the age of 14, because his potential was
incredible.
He never had to worry about anything other than playing football.
I really believe that he could not know exactly what he was doing in Paraguay, concluded Diogo
Oliveira.
So that no negative could even penetrate this bubble, Ronaldinho's older brother, Roberto
de Assis, a former footballer, the man whom Ronaldinho usually calls Patrão, which translates
as The Boss, was the star in Grêmio, having lifted the Brazil Cup in 1989.
At that time he was considered the future player of the Brazilian national team.
But instead of waiting for a call-up to the main team, he accepted a lucrative offer from
Sion from Switzerland.
This decision spoiled his career.
In his late 20s, playing in Japan, he was already taking care of Ronaldinho's career
from afar, turning down bids from PSV and tried to protect his brother from the same
mistakes he made.
Roberto was not just the older brother of a smiling boy.
After their father died in tragic circumstances, drowning in the swimming pool, Roberto became
the head of the family.
The Assis-Maria family moved to a luxurious home by local standards just a few months
before their father died.
The house was a gift from Grêmio after Assis decided to sign a new contract and reject
the offer from Torino.
To leave these memories behind, Assis decided to get rid of the pool.
Having gone through all this together, it is not surprising that Ronaldinho blindly
trusts Assis.
Despite the fact that Ronaldinho is widely known as Ronaldinho Gaúcho, he is far from
being a hero in his hometown.
These days, he can't even walk the streets of his hometown of Porto Alegre because of
past scandals with his boyhood club Grêmio.
In both of them, the brother played a major role.
To begin with, Ronaldinho left Grêmio with a great scandal in 2001 and later when Ronaldinho
returned home 10 years later, Roberto Assis encouraged a bidding war between Flamengo,
Palmeiras and Grêmio only to choose Flamengo in the end.
Despite all this, Ronaldinho still sees in Roberto a guy who gave up his youth to take
care of his family.
So there is a huge debt of gratitude between them.
Olivier says.
Vinícius Grissi, a Brazilian football expert, adds.
It is difficult to say that this unconditional trust was Ronaldinho's biggest mistake.
After all, Assis' influence on his life has been enormous since his early playing
days.
In other words, even with such a great talent, he may not have reached as far as he did if
he didn't have a person by his side.
It's no secret that, off the pitch, Ronaldinho has never been someone who decided his own
future.
It has always been in somebody else's hands, especially his brother.
Right now, while in custody in Paraguay, Ronaldinho probably has enough time to think about past
mistakes from room 104 at the Palmaroga Hotel.
In the recent years, his name has been dragged into several controversies, such as an unpaid
fine of $2.5 million for environmental damage, confiscation of his passport in Brazil, rumors
of a political career in the far-right party of the country, advertising of dubious companies
and a standing trial on the alleged money laundering scheme.
Ronaldinho survived a difficult fall, and we can only hope that his football legacy
will not be completely destroyed.
Ronaldinho was the only guy who could have really matched the status of Pelé.
I watched him since the very beginning, and I've never seen anyone as talented with a ball.
With a bit more discipline out of the field, he could have been a much bigger player, someone
to win five Ballon d'Ors.
Olivier concludes.
Instead of five Ballon d'Ors, Ronaldinho went a path from the world's best number
10 to prisoner number 194 in a Paraguayan jail.
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Bye-bye!
