Nations League: Despite disappointing performances at Euros, Cristiano Ronaldo still starts and leads Portugal

This is certainly the only confession he will make in public. Thursday, after volleying the center of Nuno Mendes and scored the 900th goal of his career against Croatia (2-1), Cristiano Ronaldo fell to his knees at the corner. In tears. The spectators chanted the famous “Siu” without him, and this departure from the usual performances shows how much this goal, the first of his international season, meant to him. .

“CR7” scored again, for the 131st time with the Seleçao (in 211 selections), perpetuating his legend of the eternal scorer, of the indispensable captain who has seen rivals circle around him for twenty years without to be taken away from the eleven guardians. Kind of unstable. The regularly updated story of the five-time Ballon d’Or winner. A story, obviously. Ronaldo (39 years old) is not immortal.

Before the start of Portugal-Croatia, the Luz stadium paid tribute to Pepe, who retired after the last senior Euro. He was the most reliable element of the Seleçao in the five finals and he chose to end his career at 41, even if he was still, perhaps, the best partner of Ruben Dias in central defense. Offensively, can “CR7” still say the same?

He is coming off the last two missed stages, between the 2022 World Cup with one goal, from a penalty, and Euros without conceding anything, for the first time in his career. Ronaldo has been playing for almost two years in Saudi Arabia, at Al-Nassr, where he continues to collect goals in a Championship that is unlike the environments where he was before, the Premier League, Serie A or La Liga.

A place reinforced by the departure of Santos and the lack of competition

At the highest level, there will be less and less pressure on the game, and even less when the opponent is of high quality. In fact, he lives, as if protected by the certainty that no other talent of his caliber will appear in this century. And with the chaos of history. Roberto Martinez replaced Fernando Santos, after the 2022 World Cup he finished on the bench, made it his priority to keep him up until the end of extra time in the quarter-finals of the Euro. against the Blues (0-0, 3-5 on the tab)July 5 in Hamburg.

At the end of summer it is Gonçalo Ramos’ left ankle injury which eliminated, for a few weeks at least, the debate about the best alternative to CR7: apart from the Parisian, the competition for the center forward position is left because Diogo Jota or Joao Felix cannot considered as experts in the profession.

The idol understood that the national team was not doing everything based on him, for him, but that he was determined to do more with him and his pride was unstoppable. In return, Ronaldo took the Luz stadium to pay tribute to Rafael Leao and Nuno Mendes, who were renowned before the start for surpassing 25 caps this summer with the Seleçao. He’s not ready for the shadows yet but he seems willing to share some light.