By eliminating Portugal (1-0) this Saturday, December 10, Morocco has undoubtedly also retired Cristiano Ronaldo. The striker with an immense career has certainly said goodbye to his dream of lifting the World Cup with his selection. He certainly dreamed of a better outing in a World Cup which was a swan song for him.
Thirty-seven years, without a club and eliminated in the quarter-finals of the 2022 World Cup after a lackluster tournament with substitute status: Cristiano Ronaldo’s fall takes on a twilight tone and the last phase of his immense career is really not up to what came before.
Of course, there is no reason to worry about the financial future of “CR7”, whose name has circulated on the side of the Saudi club of al-Nassr, under conditions announced as dizzying by the press. Spanish. But on Saturday he left the World Cup with his head down, beaten by Morocco with Portugal, which he therefore managed to lead to a European title in 2016, but never beyond the world semi-final. reached in 2006, when he was still a young first, compulsive dribbler and ready to devour everything.
Nothing like this this time around. Arrived in Qatar at the end of the soap opera of his stormy divorce with Manchester United, Ronaldo appeared as the shadow of himself, a player who has become anonymous, yet leaving those around him to grumble about his status as a completely logical replacement in view of his sports performance.
World record selections
It doesn’t matter that his World Cup started with a record – one more – when his successful penalty against Ghana made him the first player in history to score at least one goal in five World Cups. But the rest fell short, with average performances at best against Uruguay and South Korea in the first round. These matches undoubtedly precipitated the strong decision of coach Fernando Santos to leave him on the bench for the round of 16 against Switzerland.
He had appeared on the field for a good quarter of an hour, when the score was already acquired. And except for the unlikely return in 2026, he will not have managed to score a single goal in a World Cup knockout match.
He therefore stops there while his great rival for more than a decade Lionel Messi remains in the race for the title and the honors, which have always been for the Portuguese the engine of a colossal ambition, almost “abnormal” like the said Zinédine Zidane, his former coach at Real Madrid. But the Qatari competition also confirmed that his status was definitely not quite the same, including within a Seleçao that he embodied more than anyone else over his 196 caps and his 118 goals.
Present at Euro 2024?
These 196 selections, the last honored against Morocco on Friday, is also another world record, tied with the Kuwaiti Bader al-Mutawa. But what does it matter… Before the round of 16 match against Switzerland, a poll from the Portuguese sports daily In Bola had thus cruelly highlighted the downgrading of the star, with 70% of voters deciding in favor of a stay on the bench for CR7, perhaps tired of the manifestations of ego of a player whose performance has become ordinary again.
Before the World Cup, he assured that he wanted to push until Euro 2024 in selection. But that was before he found himself without a club in the wake of his resounding divorce from Manchester United, where he returned in 2021 after three unequal seasons at Juventus.
But even he, the stadium god with slicked back hair and an annual income of more than 100 million euros, a star everywhere he has been and a global brand, has been caught up in the harshness of elite football. For him too, time passes. And not sure that he goes beyond his 196 selections.
(With AFP)