World Cup 2018: Frustrated Cristiano Ronaldo's new, adapted game fell short of what Portugal needed
Deep into stoppage time, his irritation boiled over in a angry display of resignation
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Your support makes all the difference.Was it an admirable show of sportsmanship or a sign of Cristiano Ronaldo’s mounting frustration? Both, perhaps. Edinson Cavani was struggling with a calf problem eight minutes after re-establishing Uruguay's lead. He needed to leave the pitch. Ronaldo was more than happy to help him.
With an arm around Cavani’s waist and his step gradually quickening underneath, Ronaldo ushered the Uruguayan away, dropped him at the byline like a burdensome bag of shopping then turned around and re-entered the fray, reassuring himself that he could still put his evening right.
Instead though, Ronaldo continued to smoulder, just as he had done for most of the night, ever since Cavani’s spectacular opener in the seventh minute. In the closing stages, Ronaldo seemed at once surprised, annoyed and affronted by the idea that Portugal's World Cup – not to mention his World Cup - could end like this.
He was sometimes trying to do too much – cutting in, dribbling laterally across the face of the penalty area, searching desperately for a crack in the sky blue wall. When those cracks did not come he grew more exasperated still. Deep into stoppage time, his irritation boiled over in a angry display of resignation.
In the fourth minute of four added-on, there was an explosion of rage from Ronaldo while nose-to-nose with the Mexican referee Cesar Ramos. It resulted in an inevitable yellow card and soon enough, the Fisht Stadium’s two jumbotrons were reminding the crowd that this booking would suspend him from Portugal’s next match.
So what? Cristiano Ronaldo would not sacrifice a chance to play in a World Cup quarter-final if he believed he could still reach said quarter-final anyway. Here was the admission right at the last that he – like everyone else – knew it was over.
During his international career, Ronaldo has rarely looked as surly, as sullen and – to be frank – as helpless as he did in those final stages on Saturday night.
He had every reason to be annoyed. Uruguay had safely kept him at arm’s length, shackling him to the point where the influence of one football’s greatest ‘big game’ players was barely felt. Though at times busy and combative, especially in the first half, he became steadily quieter as the clock ticked down and the prospect of Portugal’s failure dawned on him.
Just over a fortnight ago at the very same ground, Ronaldo had single-handedly held Spain, the pre-tournament favourites of many. Oscar Tabarez’s Uruguay are a less gifted side but they are far better organised, and they did not allow this contest to suit Ronaldo – or at least, this latest version.
This was a game that required the Ronaldo of old, during his early-to-mid Real Madrid pomp, beating stronger defenders with speed and quicker opponents with brute strength. It was not a game conducive to the player Ronaldo has been forced to become – the patient, conservative penalty area poacher, running less and relying more on the invention of his team-mates.
Ronaldo was not wrong to adapt to his changing, 33-year-old body. Indeed, his willingness to do so is a testament to his unwavering discipline and firm desire to be the best athlete he can be, if not the best in the world. Yet for all his recent talk of having a ‘biological age’ of 23-years-old, here in Sochi was a reminder that Ronaldo’s transition to a more passive player was still a compromise. Longevity comes at a cost.
There will be other occasions, between now and his eventual retirement, when this latter-day style he has adopted does not suit the task at hand. At least at Real Madrid, a team-mate who is not light years off his level can always pick up the slack. With Portugal, that is not always the case. On those occasions, he and this national team – which is still reliant on him for moments of genius – are liable to struggle.
This may not be Ronaldo’s last World Cup. It might not even be his penultimate one – his claim that he could play until the age of 41 would take him up to the 2026 tournament in the United States, Canada and Mexico. But even if he is to appear in Qatar in four years’ time, that will probably require further paring back of his style, yet more compromises.
Ronaldo is not at that point yet and it would be foolish to claim otherwise on the back of one tournament exit. This is a player that has scored more than 40 goals every season for the past eight years. He is still one of the two best players in the world.
You wonder though, if Ronaldo is to keep on going, at what point will this supreme footballer – who judges himself by the highest of standards – become so far removed from his peak level of performance that frustrating nights like this are not the exception but the rule?
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