Portugal fell in the quarterfinals with a loss to France, and the team’s captain did not reach his best in the tournament despite the great responsibility.
European Football Championships on channels 14.6.–14.7. Go to the competition website from this link.
Cristiano Ronaldo has apparently played his last match in the European football championships.
Portugal lost to France in the quarterfinals on Friday. The actual game time and the 30-minute overtime match were goalless, so the decision was only made in a penalty shootout.
Ronaldo succeeded in his own endeavour, but Portugal’s unlucky warrior was Joao Felixwho shot his own attempt into the post.
Ronaldo had previously said that this would be his last European Championship. Ronaldo set records in the tournament, but no goals.
Ronaldo was heavily criticized during the tournament. The striker, who played in Saudi Arabia for less than two years, was in Portugal’s starting line-up in all matches.
– In the peak years, it was enough to throw the ball somewhere behind the line, and Ronaldo was half a meter higher than the topper. Now I got the feeling that they are still being applied for, but he can no longer get to them, among others Urheilu’s expert Markus Halsti wondered during the tournament.
Here are 11 statistical highlights from Ronaldo’s special tournament.
23 – Ronaldo has the most shots in the entire tournament. His final number of field goal attempts is three more than the number two in the statistics Kylian Mbappé. In the quarter-final against Slovakia alone, Ronaldo had eight goal attempts.
3 – Statistics service Opta at least didn’t try to flatter Ronaldo when reporting his statistics in the playoffs of prestigious tournaments. Ronaldo has now played a total of 21 playoff matches in the European Championship and World Cup and scored three goals in them. From the 2004 European Championship, the reading is the same as the French legend With Zinedine Zidanewho ended his career in 2006.
5 – Ronaldo and French captain Mbappé have now met five times in the club and national teams. This was the first time Ronaldo has lost. However, the goals of the mutual matches are still 5–0 in favor of Ronaldo.
60 – Ronaldo has taken a total of 61 free kicks in the EC and World Cups. 14 of these have gone towards the goal and only one has sunk into the net. The only direct free-kick goal is from the 2018 World Cup, where Ronaldo fired a stylish shot into the Spanish net. He scored a hat trick in the match. In Friday’s match against France, Ronaldo was sent off, and Portugal’s free kick was taken Bruno Fernandes. Later, Fernandes was substituted, so Ronaldo was allowed to smash the ball with full force into the wall.
6 – Ronaldo became the first player to play in six European Championships. Four other players have played in five European Championships. Three of them – defender of Portugal Pepe and backup goalkeeper Rui Patricio as well as the Croatian midfielder Luka Modric – was also involved in this tournament. After the quarterfinals, Ronaldo confirmed that the EC tournament will be the last of his career.
3 – Ronaldo got to the penalty spot three times. Two of those opportunities came in the quarterfinals against Slovakia. On the first attempt, Ronaldo failed, which broke him into tears in the middle of the match. A short time later, he marched to the same spot to start the penalty shootout and scored with a near-perfect shot. Another successful performance came on Friday, but it wasn’t enough.
5 – Portugal’s group stage match against Turkey got worse off the field. During the match, at least five fans ran from the stands onto the field, each of them going straight to Ronaldo to take a group photo. After the match, even more fans came. Ronaldo became frustrated with repeated disturbances and the Portuguese Football Federation demanded UEFA to tighten security measures.
39 – Ronaldo assisted Fernandes in the 3-0 goal against Turkey. At the age of 39 years and 138 days, he became the oldest player to score a goal during the European Championships. The goal assist was already his seventh overall in EC tournaments. That is also a new record reading.
11 – A team of Finnish children was able to accompany Ronaldo and Portugal to the field for the playoff match. Children between the ages of 6 and 10 had won their places through a lottery. The camera in the player’s tunnel showed how the stunned Finns welcomed the Portuguese team.
2.8 – Before Friday’s quarter-final, Ronaldo’s expected goals in the EC tournament was the second highest in the tournament. By waiting for a goal, the probability of the shot going into the goal is estimated. The higher the expected goal, the more likely the shot will hit the goal. The background is the modeling of millions of shots. In theory, Ronaldo should have scored about three goals with his shots already before Friday.
0 – Despite his good situations, Ronaldo was completely scoreless in the games. Previously, he had never played in an EC or WC tournament, even in the group stage, without scoring a single goal. In his five previous EC tournaments, Ronaldo scored a total of 14 goals.
The races are followed moment by moment in the app and on ‘s website in this article.