Ronaldo’s 50th birthday arrives with the familiar date of 22 September approaching, but the former Inter forward’s own story begins four days earlier. The Brazilian known across football as Il Fenomeno was born on 18 September 1976 in Bento Ribeiro, a neighbourhood in the north-west of Rio de Janeiro.
The confusion came because Ronaldo Nazario, the third child of Nelio Nazario de Lima and Sonia dos Santos Barata, was not registered immediately. His mother completed the birth registration only four days later, once the family had found the money required for the document. The official date became 22 September, the day Ronaldo has traditionally marked as his birthday.
For years, even the year created uncertainty. A personal page once listed his birth as 22 September 1977, and Ronaldo himself thanked supporters for their wishes beneath that date on Facebook. It was later corrected: he belongs to the celebrated 1976 generation which also produced Francesco Totti, Andriy Shevchenko, Alessandro Nesta, Clarence Seedorf and Michael Ballack.
Ronaldo has explained that the delay in registration reflected the circumstances of his family at the time. “My parents needed a few days to find the money for the birth certificate,” he said. “The doctor delivered me for free because my parents could not afford it. In the end, my father collected three kilos of shrimp on the beach and gave them to the doctor as a gesture of thanks. They even gave me the doctor’s name.”
It is a striking beginning for a player whose career would carry him from Rio to Europe and into Serie A, where his speed, balance and finishing made him one of the defining figures of his generation. The date may have remained blurred for decades, but the milestone is not: Ronaldo turns 50 this week and is set to celebrate in Rio de Janeiro.
