"Cristiano must be present," Portugal manager Roberto Martinez said after his team drew 1-1 with the Democratic Republic of the Congo. "It doesn't make sense to take off the greatest goalscorer in football history in a match where we need to score goals."
Except that's exactly the problem. Ronaldo, at 41, is no longer the greatest goalscorer in football history in any functional sense. He's the ghost of that player — occupying the space where a goal threat should be, and pulling Portugal's entire attacking shape into a black hole around him.
A squad built to win, stifled by one name
This Portugal side should genuinely frighten opponents. Bruno Fernandes — Premier League player of the season — runs the game from midfield. Vitinha and Joao Neves just powered PSG to the Champions League. Joao Felix, Bernardo Silva, Rafael Leao, Pedro Neto, Ruben Dias: this is a squad with the quality to go deep in a World Cup, maybe win it.
Instead they drew with DR Congo. One point from a game they should have won comfortably, because their centre-forward can no longer hold a defensive line, run in behind, or finish when chances arrive. He "vainly looked for openings, snatched weakly at the ball, and screamed at the sky," as one observer put it. That's not a player in form. That's a player running on fumes and reputation.
The speed and agility left years ago. What's gone now is the sharpness — the instinctive read of where the ball is going, the burst to get there first. He looks stiff even walking. Against a side like DR Congo, that shouldn't matter. It did.
His contemporaries are making him look worse
The comparisons doing the rounds right now aren't flattering. Lionel Messi, 38, scored a hat-trick against Algeria — not by chasing the game, but by picking his moments, slowing the match down in his head while everyone else ran at full speed. Cape Verde's 40-year-old goalkeeper Vozinha made seven saves in a 0-0 draw with Spain. Both players are showing what intelligent adaptation to aging looks like.
Ronaldo is showing the alternative.
The refusal to accept a reduced role — to come off the bench, to contribute from the edges — isn't just bad for his image. It's tactically crippling a team with genuine World Cup ambitions. Martinez, seemingly too deferential to Ronaldo's legend to make the obvious call, is enabling it.
Portugal's odds to lift the trophy in July look shakier every time Ronaldo starts. The talent is there. The problem is wearing the number 7 shirt and showing no signs of stepping aside.
