Be it Neymar’s updates on Instagram of those cute moments with his son or Cristiano Ronaldo’s daddy-dearest persona captured with son Cristiano Jr at a May tennis match, the gods of football have gone on to be examples beyond the field. These fathers not only acknowledge children out of wedlock, they are also hands-on when it comes to their kids’ upbringing.
Neymar was 19 when his former girlfriend Carolina Dantas gave birth to his son in 2011. Since then Neymar’s son has often been seen on training grounds, the bleachers, and on Instagram. The Brazilian star even sports a tattoo of his son’s name, Davi Lucca. Ronaldo is also known for cutting a £10 million deal with a British student, who got pregnant with his child after a one-night stand, for exclusive guardianship. Never mind the confusion over guardianship that happened later, he is still the ideal father.
Closer home, however, it’s a stark contrast. We perhaps only have examples of fathers walking out on their children. And while the mothers are able to handle the child alone, it is still a struggle.
Among the success stories of women who have had to bring up their children alone is that of Dolly Thakore. The theatre artiste was left to bring up son, Quasar Padamsee, after her live-in partner Alyque Padamsee decided to leave her for Sharon Prabhakar. It was 1987 and Dolly was open about the pain and how it felt like she was “drowning”. Today, “proud” of the kind of fathers that Neymar and Ronaldo are, Dolly says, “It’s such a wonderful thing to see fathers like them. At least a few men think liberally. And they are setting really good examples for men all over.”
Another infamous example is that of Aamir Khan and his affair with the British journalist Jessica Hines. In 2005, Hines and her two-year-old son, Jaan, hit the headlines. And the interviews of Hines that followed were that of her insisting that her son had “no father”. This continues to plague Aamir owing to his ‘Mr Perfect’ image he portrays.
Footballers, on the other hand, are perceived as the “bad boys”. But, in his book, Why Soccer Matters, football legend Pele explains why footballers make great fathers. He argues that these athletes are “skilled” people who nurse an innate need to pass on their skills to the next generation.
Sociologist Shiv Vishvanathan puts the daddy differences, or rather the “point of hypocrisy” into perspective. “Largely, in India, it is just a matter of a conservative society. Even celebs are bound to conform to social pressures. Moreover, when an actor turns 40, no matter how bindaas he would like to be or believe he is, at that age, they need to portray a respectable image. They tend to be more prudent as concepts of social responsibility begin to take over,” he says.
‘My boy, my life’
Another exceptional football dad is Mohamed Zidan. The Egypt striker faced flak when son Adam was born to his Danish “girlfriend” Stina. In 2010, the news coverage of Adam’s birth was different in Egypt than in Europe. In the conservative country, papers scrambled to find the “correct” terminology for the relationship between Zidan and Stina. In 2012, he raised more eyebrows when he announced that he plans to marry her after he had claimed to have married her in 2006. Despite the controversies, Zidan is a doting father and Adam even made an appearance on Zidan’s Facebook page as recently as on Monday night. “Nothing is better than being with the best thing in my life #myboy #mylife”, the footballer said.
