page_title: Ronaldo (Brazilian footballer)
section_title: Personal life
hierarchical_section_title: Ronaldo (Brazilian footballer) / Outside football / Personal life
caption_attribution_description: Português: Entrevista coletiva do futebolista brasileiro Ronaldo Nazário no Ministério da Educação.
context_page_description: Ronaldo Luís Nazário de Lima, commonly known as Ronaldo, is a Brazilian business owner, president of La Liga club Real Valladolid, and a retired professional footballer who played as a striker. Popularly dubbed in Portuguese O Fenômeno, he is widely considered one of the greatest players of all time. As a multi-functional striker who brought a new dimension to the position, Ronaldo has been the influence for a generation of strikers that have followed. His individual accolades include being named FIFA World Player of the Year three times, and winning two Ballon d'Or awards.
  Ronaldo started his career at Cruzeiro and moved to PSV in 1994. He joined Barcelona in 1996 for a then world record transfer fee, and at 20 years old he was named the 1996 FIFA World Player of the Year, making him the youngest recipient of the award. In 1997, Inter Milan broke the world record fee to sign Ronaldo, making him the first player since Diego Maradona to break the world transfer record twice. At 21 he received the 1997 Ballon d'Or, and he remains the youngest recipient of the award.
context_section_description: During 1997, Ronaldo met the Brazilian model and actress Susana Werner on the set of Brazilian telenovela Malhação when they acted together in three episodes. Although they never married, they began a long-term relationship and lived together in Milan until the beginning of 1999.
  In April 1999, Ronaldo married Brazilian footballer Milene Domingues, at the time pregnant with the couple's first son, Ronald, who was born in Milan, on 6 April 2000. The marriage lasted four years. In 2005, Ronaldo became engaged to Brazilian model and MTV VJ Daniela Cicarelli, who became pregnant but suffered a miscarriage; the relationship lasted only three months after their luxurious wedding at the Château de Chantilly. The ceremony reportedly cost £700,000 (€896,000).
  Despite his fame – a 2003 poll by Nike listed him the world's most famous sportsperson (and third most famous person overall) – Ronaldo is protective of his privacy, including with teammates, stating in an interview with The Telegraph, "each [player] has his own private life, and no one thinks about anyone else's private life. Or talks about it." By 2003 he was fluent in Portuguese, Spanish and Italian, and had a good understanding of English.
  In a 2005 interview with Folha de S.Paulo, Ronaldo revealed that, somewhat unexpectedly, he identified racially as white, generating a wider conversation about the complex role of race in Brazil. Ronaldo's father, Nelio Nazario, stated, "He knows full well that he's black. Actually, at the time, I thought it was some philosophy, something to that effect. Because he knows he's black." According to a study led by geneticist Sérgio Pena of the Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics, most Brazilians often have a misconception about their roots. "The maternal ancestry of the Brazilian white was one-third African, one third Amerindian, and one third European. An individual who considers himself white may be genomically more African than an individual who considers himself to be brown or black."
  In April 2008, Ronaldo was involved in a scandal involving three travesti prostitutes whom he met in a nightclub in Rio de Janeiro. Ronaldo claimed that upon discovering that they were legally male, he offered them $600 to leave. One of the three attempted to blackmail Ronaldo, while the other two admitted the allegations were false. Ronaldo's engagement to Maria Beatriz Antony was immediately halted, but resumed shortly after. Maria Beatriz Antony gave birth to their first daughter, named Maria Sophia, in Rio de Janeiro, on 24 December 2008. In April 2009, the family moved to a new penthouse in São Paulo. On 6 April 2010, Maria Beatriz Antony gave birth to their second daughter. The girl, born in São Paulo, was named Maria Alice. Coincidentally, Maria Alice was born exactly 10 years after her older brother Ronald.
  In December 2010, Ronaldo and his family moved to a new mansion in São Paulo. Also in December, Ronaldo took a paternity test and was confirmed to be the father of a boy named Alexander, born in April 2005. The boy was born after a brief relationship between Ronaldo and Michele Umezu, a Brazilian waitress who Ronaldo first met in Tokyo in 2002. After the confirmation of his fourth child, Ronaldo stated on 6 December 2010 that he had had a vasectomy, feeling that having four children was enough.
  In a 2011 interview with the BBC, former Real Madrid teammate Steve McManaman spoke about Ronaldo's personality. "He could go in a restaurant, and I could go in with him, and you're not just there with close friends. He invites everybody. You'd be at a table with him and it'd be a judge sitting opposite talking to a politician with someone off the street listening in. So he just had this amazing aura, where everyone wanted to join him. Sometimes there'd be 20 to 30 people sitting at meal times with him. He was a wonderful person. Everybody would second that, no matter what club he played for."
  Ronaldo was the co-owner of A1 Team Brazil, along with former F1 driver Emerson Fittipaldi. Ronaldo co-owns the sports marketing company 9INE, with hi
caption: Ronaldo during a 2005 meeting at the Brazilian Ministry of Education
exif: {"Image ImageDescription": "", "Image Make": "NIKON CORPORATION", "Image Model": "NIKON D1H", "Image Orientation": "Horizontal (normal)", "Image XResolution": "222", "Image YResolution": "222", "Image ResolutionUnit": "Pixels/Inch", "Image Software": "Adobe Photoshop 7.0", "Image DateTime": "2005:06:06 19:08:18", "Image YCbCrPositioning": "Co-sited", "Image ExifOffset": "276", "GPS GPSVersionID": "[2, 2, 0, 0]", "Image GPSInfo": "880", "Thumbnail Compression": "JPEG (old-style)", "Thumbnail XResolution": "72", "Thumbnail YResolution": "72", "Thumbnail ResolutionUnit": "Pixels/Inch", "Thumbnail JPEGInterchangeFormat": "994", "Thumbnail JPEGInterchangeFormatLength": "4357", "EXIF ExposureTime": "1/60", "EXIF FNumber": "28/5", "EXIF ExposureProgram": "Program Normal", "EXIF ExifVersion": "0220", "EXIF DateTimeOriginal": "2001:09:28 06:16:16", "EXIF DateTimeDigitized": "2001:09:28 06:16:16", "EXIF ComponentsConfiguration": "YCbCr", "EXIF CompressedBitsPerPixel": "2", "EXIF ExposureBiasValue": "0", "EXIF MaxApertureValue": "3", "EXIF MeteringMode": "Pattern", "EXIF LightSource": "Unknown", "EXIF Flash": "Strobe return light detected", "EXIF FocalLength": "135", "EXIF SubSecTime": "32", "EXIF SubSecTimeOriginal": "32", "EXIF SubSecTimeDigitized": "32", "EXIF FlashPixVersion": "0100", "EXIF ColorSpace": "sRGB", "EXIF ExifImageWidth": "2168", "EXIF ExifImageLength": "1311", "EXIF SensingMethod": "One-chip color area", "EXIF FileSource": "Digital Camera", "EXIF SceneType": "Directly Photographed", "EXIF CVAPattern": "[0, 2, 0, 2, 2, 1, 1, 0]", "EXIF CustomRendered": "Normal", "EXIF ExposureMode": "Auto Exposure", "EXIF WhiteBalance": "Auto", "EXIF DigitalZoomRatio": "1", "EXIF FocalLengthIn35mmFilm": "202", "EXIF SceneCaptureType": "Standard", "EXIF GainControl": "None", "EXIF Contrast": "Normal", "EXIF Saturation": "Normal", "EXIF Sharpness": "Normal", "EXIF SubjectDistanceRange": "0"}