Sabatini and Ronaldo's crisis in 1998: the video game theory

The night before the 1998 World Cup final between Brazil and France remains one of the most discussed mysteries in football history. Ronaldo, striker for Inter at the time, suffered a sudden illness that put his participation in doubt until the very last moment, only to take the field in visibly poor condition. France dominated the match and won the title at home.

Sandro Sabatini, during Scontro Diretto, a podcast created together with Nicolò Schira, shared his interpretation of what happened that night. According to the journalist, the official explanations are not entirely convincing. “It was 1998, I found a lot of messages on my answering machine and later I discovered what had happened to Ronaldo that night. Between us, everyone talked about an epileptic seizure but in the tests that were done afterwards there was no trace of any of that,” he said on Youtube.

Sabatini then put forward a personal hypothesis, linked to the habits of the Brazilian player. “I have my own theory, which is that he played too much PlayStation in his room with Roberto Carlos. Too many video games, add to that the anti-inflammatories he was taking for his knee and then the tension and pressure because that really was his World Cup, so in my opinion he just short-circuited, but that’s just my opinion.”

The Brazilian striker still took the field for that final, but his performance was visibly below par. The French national team won by a wide margin, lifting the trophy in front of their home crowd.