It was a fairly surreal experience concentrating on taking my penalty while a certain Real Madrid superstar sat next to the goal critiquing my efforts. However, that was the reality as my Castrol trip to meet Cristiano Ronaldo kicked-off yesterday.
After a day's grace to blow some of those jetlag cobwebs away, last night saw the 60 guests of Castrol from across the whole world descend on Valdebebas - Real Madrid's 120 hector multi-million dollar training complex, located in remote and barren land near Madrid airport.
We were treated to a tour on arrival and the complex is every bit as lavish as you'd expect from the world's biggest club.
Children from as young as seven all the way up to the senior team train at Valdebebas and its modern design has an interesting side motivation. The various changing room for the youth teams up to the full senior team are in one long building that snakes up a hill.
The seven year olds are housed in the first section and as they progress through the building they climb up another set of stairs closer to the full senior building at the top of the hill. It's a fairly direct metaphor around the climb to the top of this famous club.
Tour completed, we were shown to one of the many changing room, which are all equal in size - it doesn't matter if you're seven or 17 - you're given same changing space. The group changes into our own custom Castrol Ronaldo kits, creating another surreal image of a full squad of Ronaldo doppelgangers - I couldn't help but wonder if it was going to freak him out slightly!
We're shown onto one of the many training pitches where we're split into groups for a series of training drills with Real Madrid coaches. Divided into country groups, Australia (me, plus Adam and Teri - the winners of SBS's World Cup fantasy football competition) are paired with a rowdy bunch of South Africans.
The loudest of the South Africans (which was impressive, trust me) agrees to be captain and on meeting the first of seven Real Madrid coaches he discovers a joke that will serve him well, "Hello, I'm Cristiano Ronaldo and this is my team Real Madrid". A joke so timeless he was able to say exactly the same thing when we arrived at every training drills station.
We were being marked on our efforts, with the winners landed a "very special extra treat from Ronaldo". A line that certainly got the female participants more interested...
One such drill was shooting practice, where Ronaldo was sitting nearby, but unfortunately not participating due to a thigh strain he picked up in Portugal's 4-0 drumming of Spain on Wednesday night. It's put his likelihood of playing in Saturday's game against Bilbao in doubt, especially as Barcelona await the following week, and La Liga is basically a two-legged play-off followed by a series of regulation wins for the Spanish duopoly.
All the nations do their best, but the results and prize won't be announced until after the Ronaldo Q&A, coming up next...
We're taken into a room under one of the training ground stadiums so that the Portuguese star could field some questions. One similarity I did note from his answers that tied in with the Ronaldo press conference I attended in London ahead of the World Cup this year, was his deep affection for Manchester United.
Ronaldo spoke at length about how amazing his six years there were, how many United friends he has and still keeps in contact with (including coach Sir Alex, who I'd image doesn't stay friends with too many of his former superstars!) while he'd love to draw Manchester United in the Champions League so he could return to Old Trafford.
There was also talk of how he feels about Nani, after the Manchester United star robbed Ronaldo of a wonder goal this week by needlessly heading home from an offside position. "I'm better today than I was yesterday," explained Ronaldo. "Yesterday I was, how do you say, very pissed!"
I don't blame him! Though he did defend Nani, stating that the ball was over the line when the header was made and how it upsets him when officials get these things wrong, while also bringing up a similar situation goal line decision error from two years ago. Despite his free-scoring way, this is not a man who wants to be denied a single strike.
Overall Ronaldo came across well and seemingly more humble than his on-field persona, with the exception of answering the question "which players do you like", with a predictable, "me". He's probably earned the right be arrogant, it one of the main reasons he's so good - confidence breeds success. But he showed no signs of resentment in spending his evening with a group of slobbering foreigners (I look forward to reading your "he's only being nice for the money" comments below).
With this wrapped up there was just time to announce the winner of the training drills competition, who would each get one of Ronaldo's balls personally signed (don't be disgusting!) and the combined force of South Africa and Australia attained a respectable second place finish. The winners? Need you even ask... the bloody Germans of course!
Today includes a tour of the Bernabeu and lunch within the stadium. So check back tomorrow to see how that went.
