"If Messi is the best on the planet, Ronaldo is the best in the universe." Jose Mourinho said that. It's theatrical, sure — but it gestures at something real about what Cristiano Ronaldo has done to the sport over the past two decades.
At 41, Ronaldo arrives at World Cup 2026 with 973 career goals, five Ballon d'Ors, five Champions Leagues, and a world record 143 international goals for Portugal. He has won the European Championship and two Nations Leagues with a country of 10 million people. The one thing he doesn't have is the World Cup. And this, almost certainly, is his last chance to get it.
Is he still worth his place?
That debate has been running since he moved to Saudi Arabia in 2023, and it's fair. He has scored one goal in his last 10 World Cup or European Championship appearances. That's a brutal return for a player in the most prominent attacking role on the team.
But the counterargument has teeth. This season: 28 goals in 30 league games for Al Nassr. Five goals in five World Cup qualifiers. Eight goals in nine games during Portugal's Nations League title run. Whatever questions exist about the level of opposition in Saudi football, those numbers don't suggest a player running on fumes.
Portugal boss Roberto Martinez frames it differently to the goal tally anyway. "He's been disciplined to be in the right positions, always executing the attacking patterns that we have," Martinez said. "That gives him opportunities to score, but also the opportunity of opening space for our players."
That's a telling distinction. Ronaldo at 41 isn't the same force he was at 31, but he's also not just a passenger collecting caps. His movement, his runs in behind, his ability to split centre-halves — these are still functional weapons, and Portugal are building their attacking structure around them.
What a World Cup win would actually mean
Portugal winning the World Cup was genuinely unthinkable at the turn of the century — they had qualified for just one of the previous eight tournaments. Ronaldo's era changed that trajectory entirely. Ask any Portugal player who inspired them growing up and the answer is CR7. He is the reason the country punches at this weight.
There is a neat and almost poetic quality to the possibility of him lifting the trophy on July 19th surrounded by players who grew up idolising him. Sir Alex Ferguson, who managed some of the best players of his generation at Manchester United, said Ronaldo "surpassed all the other great ones" he ever coached. That's not nothing coming from Ferguson.
Ronaldo himself told Piers Morgan last year that nobody in the world is more famous than him. That kind of statement is easy to mock — and many do — but the fact that children in every corner of the globe still run around shouting "SIUUU" at 41 years into his life suggests he's not entirely wrong.
One World Cup. That's all that's left on the list. Portugal's odds to win it will hinge on far more than one aging striker — but his influence on how that squad thinks, plays, and believes in itself is not something you can easily price into a market.
