Last time Cristiano Ronaldo played Europa League, dollar was 109 naira, George Bush was US president

The 2022 summer transfer window has come and gone and with it Cristiano Ronaldo’s hopes of getting a move away from Manchester United to a team in the UEFA Champions League.

The Portuguese star had been pining for a move after United could only qualify for Europe’s second-grade competition, the Europa League.

But with the window now shut and a move to any top team now impossible for at least the next five months, Cristiano Ronaldo is set to play in the Europa League for the first time since 2002.

The last time Ronaldo played in this competition, it had a different name, the UEFA Cup in which 17-year-old Cristiano played two games for Sporting Lisbon, home and away in a first-round defeat to Partizan Belgrade but what else happened in 2002?

Korea and Japan had joined forces to host the first FIFA World Cup in Asia which Brazil won in July, two months before Ronaldo’s UEFA Cup bow.

Real Madrid won their ninth Champions League trophy and would have to wait 12 years for the next one with the help of Ronaldo.

There was also a winter Olympic games that year, hosted by the United States in February with a total of 2,399 athletes from 77 different countries participating in 80 athletic events.  

From a Nigerian perspective, Olusegun Obasanjo was in the first term of his presidency and a dollar was equivalent to 109 Naira.

Obasanjo would go on to serve a second term and Nigeria has had three presidents since then, oh and the dollar is now worth 691 naira… that’s how long it’s been.

The Miss World beauty pageant which was supposed to be held in Abuja sparked a religious riot and led to the deaths of over 200 people, causing the event to be moved to England instead. 

On the world stage, George W. Bush was almost halfway through his first term as president of the United States, there have been three more presidents after that and Ronaldo is still playing.

In March 2002, months before Ronaldo played in the UEFA Cup, Queen Elizabeth (not that one) the Queen Mother of the United Kingdom passed away.

HIV/AIDS was the golden child of viruses at the time as an estimated 40 million people had been infected worldwide.