Cristiano Ronaldo’s sculptor swats aside criticism for his previous dodgy statue as he unveils £25,000 bronze bust of Gareth Bale ahead of Real Madrid’s Champions League final with Juventus in Cardiff.
Welsh superstar Gareth Bale is set for a mouthwatering homecoming this week as Real Madrid and Juventus meet in the Champions League final in Cardiff on Saturday.
But Bale will not be the only one who makes an eagerly anticipated return. Emanuel Santos, otherwise known as the architect of that famous, if not slightly bizarre, Cristiano Ronaldo bust, has made his sculpting comeback.
And Wales’s ‘golden boy’ must settle for bronze on Wednesday as Santos’s first project since his unique depiction of the Portuguese icon is unveiled ahead of the showpiece at the Principality Stadium this weekend.
The bronze bust, weighing in at 40kg and worth an estimated £25,000, took Santos 264 hours to complete – including a whole day of searching images on the internet – before it was cast in Porto and flown 2,300km to Bale’s native Cardiff, where it will be on show in the PaddyPower store until Sunday.
Santos is buoyed by the recent launch into the spotlight after his first major project was revealed at the newly-named ‘Aeropuerto Cristiano Ronaldo’ in Madeira – even if it was not greeted too kindly by Twitter.
Some likened Ronaldo’s statue to former Manchester City and Sunderland striker Niall Quinn, while others believed it resembled 'The Head' from Disney's Art Attack, but Santos laughed off the responses from the social media jesters.
‘I have no problems with those things,’ The 40-year-old said.
‘I have a lot of people who do not like the bust because it doesn’t look like him exactly. And I try to explain – it’s not a photo.’
For Santos, a Real Madrid fan, creating the bust was more than an attempt to simply emulate a likeness of Ronaldo, it was his interpretation which was fuelled by his admiration for the Madrid talisman.
‘In here,’ he said pointing to his chest, ‘I have a lot of feelings about him. Expressions, feelings, power, something that people can’t understand.’
The sculptor has, however, managed to see the funny side of the Twitter meltdown and batted away any suggestion his spirits had been dampened.
And why would they be? After all, this is a man who still works three days a week at an airport and spends the other two sculpting in a small room in his home hoping to make it his full occupation. It is his time in the limelight.
Rewind just a few months and Santos was a full-time cleaner in an airport in Madeira. Now he is recognised just walking down the street and even boasts fans of his own.
‘Some people say “Oh it is the man of the bust!” and take a selfie,’ he said. 'This is my dream come true – that’s why I am looking forward to this weekend!
‘I feel very proud. Gareth Bale is a great player, a fantastic player. And the final of the Champions League is going to be in Wales – everything makes sense.’
Santos has not spoken to Wales’s Euro 2016 superstar – whose bust incidentally cost more to make than Ronaldo’s due to his iconic ‘man-bun’ using more bronze – but is boldly confident he will like his most recent work.
Bale is not a nailed-on starter for Los Blancos this Saturday. But should he get the nod and net the winner it would be a fairytale story.
The Portuguese is self-taught and has been sculpting only two years. His first job was a life-size sculpture of fishermen in a boat in Canical, his hometown in Madeira. His second? A bust of the most famous man in football to be revealed at an airport named after him.
So, the second outing, the notoriously difficult ‘second album’ so to speak, how does it feel this time around?
‘I don’t feel pressure,’ he said. ‘I feel very proud and this new one is very important for me and for him, as well.
‘Because when Gareth Bale sees this bust when he goes home to Wales, I think he will like it. He will enjoy it. I made this bust with my soul, with everything I have inside of me.
‘It was not difficult. When you are doing what you like, what you love and everything is going well. It’s not complicated.
‘I have to wake up, I have to pinch myself, you know? It’s a dream.’
What next? A Terracotta Army of Real Madrid stars? Not quite — although he did muse over the idea of making Benfica president Luis Filipe Vieira his next masterpiece. Instead his career may be taken in yet another direction, politics.
The Socialist party in his hometown of Canical reached out to him to run in the local government elections in October and he decided earlier this week that is to be his next step. He will begin campaigning at the end of the summer.
No comments:
Post a Comment