NEW YORK – Two things can be true of Cristiano Ronaldo. He will end his career without winning a World Cup and yet somehow, he is the perfect poster boy for an ever more surreal Fifa brand.
Portugal will remember this as their summer of squandered opportunity, Ronaldo’s obstructive presence the triumph of the celebrity cult over the finer mechanics of the game.
At 41, he should never have played as many minutes at this World Cup as he did; not least because he was supposed to be banned for two of them, before Fifa inexplicably intervened to stop him being suspended. Could you imagine?
None of the attributes which once made Ronaldo soar above the rest – with one exception – are present any longer. Spain left him in space that once would have been criminal. In the air, Aymeric Laporte and Pau Cubarsi made light work of him. At the break, he had had 12 touches, the fewest of anyone on the pitch.
That much was obvious to Bruno Fernandes, who became reluctant to cross to him at all, though not to his manager, Roberto Martinez. Such wilful blindness ultimately cost him his job – he resigned hours after the final whistle.
Martinez has spent the last few years travelling around the world frittering away the gilded epochs of golden generations. First, the great Belgium of Kevin De Bruyne, Vincent Kompany, Eden Hazard, Thibaut Courtois. With Portugal he was entrusted the world’s best midfield of Bruno, Vitinha, Joao Neves. Elsewhere Ruben Dias and Bernardo Silva, Joao Cancelo. In Nuno Mendes, the world’s best left-back.
Had the round of 16 gone to penalties, Vitinha, one of their better spot-kick takers, was already off, leaving his teammate 15 years his senior to plod around for the full 90.
Martinez, himself born in Balaguer, Spain, has made a great show of singing the Portuguese national anthem. An act of greater patriotism would have been to give his adopted nation the best possible chance of winning the World Cup – not indulging what he must have known was an oversized ego hindering his team’s chances.
And it is clear that he did know, seeing as Portugal were never willing to fully commit to the bit. They did not operate around Ronaldo, turning him into a Haaland-type focal point through which everything else must flow. They would not leave him in the box and rather had their record goalscorer dithering 30 yards from goal.
For the last month Portugal have effectively been reduced to playing with 10 men, barring the moments Ronaldo found a more comfortable stride against Uzbekistan, and with the penalty against Croatia.
Martinez is not alone in this. In the deranged church of CR7, the manager is fighting an unwinnable war. Erik ten Hag will testify. At this World Cup, Carlo Ancelotti bowed to the same external pressure, opting for Neymar at the expense of Joao Pedro and Richarlison, needlessly handing him their final kick.
This is, at least, not a vintage Brazil side. The tragedy of the Ronaldo sect is that Portugal had their best opportunity to do something special since the days of Luis Figo and Rui Costa. All of it was thrown away in the name of pandering to an inflated sense of self-worth.
Ronaldo might have bowed out after Russia 2018. He certainly could have gone once Lionel Messi had beaten him to the punch in Qatar. That is how long the decline dates back – he did not manage a successful dribble in five matches at that tournament, nor in the five this summer. A player who once possessed his calibre must have felt deep down that the game was up and could not bring himself to concede it.
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It did not have to end with such indignity. The staggering physical prowess of appearing on the world stage at his age has been lost in the noise that follows him in victory and defeat.
The heart has been ripped out of a World Cup dream but it is no longer even worthy of sympathy. The romantic appeal lay in his colleagues, who have been denied a moment that might never come around again.
After plenty of ceremonial, performative tears at the final whistle, Ronaldo’s will be the grandest goodbye. His teammates might find that hard to forgive.
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