A documentary about Ronaldinho’s life and career premieres on Netflix on April 16th, and one of the topics in focus is the Brazilian’s successful, but also turbulent, period at PSG, where he had a difficult relationship with coach Luis Fernández, and still seems to hold a grudge against him today.
“Laurente Perpère [then president of PSG] was a father figure to me. I have many good things to say about him. The other one [Luis Fernández]? I have nothing to say,” says Ronaldinho with a smile, in statements reproduced by RMC Sport, refusing to name the Spanish coach who, for his part, recalls some of the Brazilian’s behaviors.
After the 2002 World Cup, which Ronaldinho won with Brazil, Fernández says that the relationship between the two “went from bad to worse.” “People who worked in the nightlife industry told me that he would go out to party the night before games. And that he would return at 6:00 or 7:00 in the morning, going to bed at dawn,” recalls Fernández, who for that very reason often put Ronaldinho on the substitutes’ bench.
Ronaldinho arrived in the French capital at the age of 21, after emerging at Grêmio, and Perpère remembers him in this way as a “very childlike” young man who was still “discovering the world”: “It was touching. I remember one time he asked us if we had enough money to buy a refrigerator.”
With 77 games and 25 goals scored in two years at PSG, Ronaldinho signed for Barcelona in 2003, where he experienced the most golden period of his career, winning the Champions League and the Ballon d’Or in 2005.
