In many ways, it’s not really his fault.
If you were indulged and told you could do something for long enough, even though the evidence is pretty clear that you can’t anymore, you would probably try to keep doing it too.
If you were consistently picked by a manager who ignores the obvious, you might think you still have it.
If you walked into a stadium full of people, many who have come to specifically see you and one of whom made a sign that said “With or without the World Cup, you will always be my GOAT”, you might think you were still worth seeing.
It’s hard to let go. Especially when there’s always another milestone to reach for. Another tournament to play in. A thousand career goals to reach. And especially when your peers and old rivals are still doing it.
But Cristiano Ronaldo can’t do it anymore. Or at least, he can’t do it to anywhere near the standard required for Portugal, a team who, in theory, are among the favourites to win the World Cup.
For just over an hour of Wednesday’s 1-1 draw against DR Congo in Houston, Ronaldo basically did nothing. It wasn’t even as if he was doing things badly, rather that he wasn’t doing them at all. He was a void, a theoretically corporeal being but one that might as well have been a wisp, a spirit of no substance.
There weren’t really any shanked shots, any terrible passes, any egregious errors. Nothing that someone could create a supercut of to put on social media to mock him. Nothing.
Then, after half-time, he had two shots. They were pretty much identical, efforts that went wide of the near post from cutbacks at the byline.
This was the first:
… and this was the second:
Neither were sitters — although you could argue a prime Ronaldo would have gobbled them up — and the first was from a pass that was behind him and very difficult to direct goalwards.
The second was slightly more symbolic, in that if he had let it run then Bruno Fernandes, who was right behind him, would’ve had a clearer effort on goal.
It was something Thierry Henry picked up on Fox Sports. “The team needs to score. You don’t need to score,” Henry said, suggesting Ronaldo is putting himself above the team. “If he goes into the six-yard box, it would have been a tap-in for Bruno Fernandes.”
Then after that … nothing again.
The most telling moment was arguably not either of those two missed chances, but one shortly afterwards when a cross came over from the right with Ronaldo at the far post. It looked like a decent ball, the sort that he used to rise magnificently to head home. This time he didn’t rise. In a literal sense: he just didn’t jump. Because he can’t anymore? Because he didn’t want to? Who knows.
The ball was cleared by DR Congo defender Chancel Mbemba, in what turned out to be a routine header away from a guy who used to be Cristiano Ronaldo.
Shortly after those chances, thousands of the Portugal fans in the stadium began singing Ronaldo’s name, trying to rouse him, trying to manifest one of those great moments he used to produce. He encouraged the chants, maybe trying to manifest something himself. But he couldn’t.
At the moment, the only convincing argument for Ronaldo’s presence is that he creates a distraction, something for his team-mates to take advantage of. “A lot of the game he’s standing in an offside position,” said Wayne Rooney on the BBC, as in the example below where Ronaldo is circled.
“That’s not him being lazy, that’s him being very clever. He’s making the DR Congo defence have to search for him, which is creating space for his team-mates. But it also means that when the ball goes out wide he can get back in an offside position and cause real problems.”
The trouble being that he isn’t causing any of those problems. Because he can’t do it anymore.
And the opposition know it, too. After the game, the DR Congo players were too sensible or respectful to say that outright, but it’s clear they know.
“We know he isn’t the same as before, so we knew he would run less,” said midfielder Ngal’ayel Mukau. “I expected maybe a bit more from him, but it’s normal, he’s a bit older. It’s an honour to play against him.”
Again, Ronaldo is not necessarily the one to blame for this. After the game, Roberto Martinez doubled down on not just selecting him but leaving him on for the full 90 minutes. “In a game like this, where it was difficult to break down the penalty area, it’s crucial to utilise Cristiano’s skills,” he told the media. “It wouldn’t make sense to take off the best goalscorer in football history in a match where we need to score goals.”
He didn’t really mean to, but he said the magic word in there: history. Ronaldo is the past. And it’s not new; it’s not as if Martinez couldn’t have seen this coming: this was the 10th major tournament game in a row in which Ronaldo has failed to score.
If Martinez wanted to take him as a sort of mascot, who the rest of the players were in awe of and could either inspire them or provide a ‘break glass in case of emergency’ late option off the bench — as Carlo Ancelotti has done with Neymar — or even as a specialist penalty taker, then that would be justifiable.
But he’s continuing to pick a 41-year-old who walks around for most of the game and doesn’t really provide a goal threat, as the spearhead to one of the most talented groups of wingers and midfielders in the World Cup. It’s impossible to think that, had Ronaldo been suspended as a result of the red card he got against Ireland in their penultimate qualifier, rather than receiving an inexplicable pardon for two of his three-game ban, it would have been better for Martinez and Portugal.
All of this was particularly acute when compared to what happened on Tuesday, when the biggest stars delivered with some gusto. Erling Haaland scored twice for Norway. Kylian Mbappe scored twice for France. And of course, the great looming spectre, the other half of the greatest individual rivalry in the game’s history, Lionel Messi scored a hat-trick for Argentina.
After the final whistle, Ronaldo began to walk, slowly, straight for the tunnel. Halfway there he paused, turned back and shook hands with some team-mates and some opposition players. Then he turned again and completed his journey off the pitch.
A few of his colleagues were not far behind, but they were called back to the centre circle, from where most of the Portugal squad applauded their fans. But Ronaldo was already gone, down into the bowels of the stadium. There’s no suggestion that he actively ignored his team-mates and by extension the fans, but he was just … gone, on his own, no use to his colleagues. As metaphors go, it’s not an especially subtle one.
In many ways, it’s not really his fault. But he can’t do it anymore.
THE NEW YORK TIMES
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