Portugal began its World Cup with a goal befitting a real contender. In the sixth minute, the Portuguese pinned the Democratic Republic of Congo in their own box, fired a dangerous cross from the right side that skittered across the face of goal before being cleared, recycled the ball to the left side, and then pumped in another cross that was met by the head of late-arriving midfielder João Neves. It was 1-0, and Portugal looked ready to fly. Too bad Cristiano Ronaldo would spend the rest of the game dragging them back to the surface, where they would ultimately draw, 1-1.
Ronaldo must have seen what Erling Haaland, Kylian Mbappé, and especially Lionel Messi got up to in their first games, and it must have burned him up inside. The 41-year-old's career-long rivalry with the GOAT has only become more trivial as time has gone on. Where once "Messi vs. Ronaldo, who ya got?" was one of the most hotly debated questions in sports, it becomes clearer every year that Ronaldo was never really on Messi's level. Case in point: Messi won the last World Cup and scored a hat trick in his first game at this one while re-establishing his bona fides as the best player on a contending team. Ronaldo just kind of sucks now.
Ronaldo started at striker in Wednesday's game, and for most of it it was hard to remember that he was even on the field. He finished the game with three shots, none on target, and never once seemed to be influencing the action. This is part of a larger trend stretching back years: Ronaldo hasn't scored in any of his last 10 games at the World Cup or Euros, and the last one he did bag was a penalty kick against Ghana at the 2022 World Cup. If you want to find his last open-play goal at either of those competitions, you have to go back to the 2021 Euros.
The lack of goals is less concerning than the amount of time Ronaldo is spending on the field. There is nothing wrong with a national team, even one as good as Portugal, handing a World Cup roster spot to an aging great. Hell, it's even fine to keep him in the starting XI, so long as it's understood that he's no longer the focal point, and that he'll be one of the first guys subbed off. Portugal has instead chosen to let Ronaldo hold them hostage. According to ESPN, Ronaldo has played 396 of a possible 420 minutes at Portugal's last four matches in major competitions, and on Wednesday he was, somehow, out there for the full 90. Manager Roberto Martinez made four substitutes, and even brought on his backup striker, Gonçalo Ramos, but Ronaldo stayed on the field while his younger and better teammates headed to the bench.
Martinez didn't inspire much confidence in his decision-making after the game. When asked why his 41-year-old misfiring striker was left on the field while four of his teammates were hooked, Martinez started sounding less like a soccer manager and more like a press officer for dying despot. "It makes no sense to get the best goal scorer in world football out in a game that you need goals," he said.
Roberto, is the "best goal scorer in world football" listening to us right now? Don't say anything, just blink twice if he is.
All forwards go through dry spells, and Martinez is probably banking on the fact that his team is good enough to win games with Ronaldo in the lineup, and at some point will serve him up a few confidence-restoring tap-ins. He should be more worried than he's projecting, though, because it's not just Ronaldo's age and diminished physical abilities that seem to be the problem, but his mentality. After the game, Thierry Henry demonstrated why he's the best studio analyst in the game with a damning one-minute breakdown of a moment in which Ronaldo's selfishness squandered a goal-scoring opportunity for his team.
That's the kind of play made by a striker who is thinking less about winning the game and more about the three goals his rival scored the day before. Five years ago, that kind of fixation may have produced a hat trick for Ronaldo, but now it's just causing him to get in everyone's way.
