Cristiano Ronaldo is an icon of Portuguese football but now it is time for him to step back and let the younger players develop.
To be fair, the European Selecao “lived” thanks to Ronaldo and also “died” because of Ronaldo. They played well against France in the EURO 2024 quarter-finals, creating many scoring opportunities but had to stop painfully on penalties.
More importantly, in the second knockout match, all the Portuguese players tried their best for 120 minutes to create scoring opportunities for the 39-year-old captain. However, Ronaldo left a near-disaster performance, similar to the way he did against Slovenia.
The striker born in 1985 seemed to have little interest in moving without the ball and had no notable coordination with his teammates. Even when he received the opportunity, he wasted it in a very regrettable way. It was the end of Ronaldo’s international career and this was the right time for him to “liberate” Portugal.
Ronaldo is the number 1 legend of the Portuguese national team…
Cristiano Ronaldo has only three goals in 21 knockout games in major European tournaments with the Selecao, which is a bit of a problem when you consider that the entire system under his predecessor Fernando Santos and now Roberto Martinez was designed to help him score.
Portugal have a wealth of top attacking talent in their ranks, with Bruno Fernandes, Rafael Leao, Bernardo Silva, Diogo Jota, Joao Felix and Pedro Neto to name a few. However, they are more like “side characters in a Cristiano Ronaldo show”.
Before EURO 2024 kicked off, coach Martinez was said to have put a lot of effort into creating a style of play that would allow the striker from Al Nassr to shine. However, Ronaldo was unable to score any goals, even from the 11m mark.
…so now it’s time for you to step back.
Is it possible that the Spanish strategist does not see the problem that a 39-year-old striker like Cristiano Ronaldo is facing? The reason given is probably that he still stubbornly believes that the superstar quality of this captain will explode at the right time, despite what his predecessor Santos did at the 2022 FIFA World Cup, before he was fired.
In that sense, Martinez must take responsibility for Portugal’s collapse at this EURO finals. In the hands of the former “captain” of the Belgian team was a squad of talented players in all lines, who, if they had played to their true potential, should have at least reached the final.
What next? Cristiano Ronaldo can still be used, but he should only play a spiritual role to motivate his juniors . At the age of nearly 40 with many years of fighting and great pressure, Ronaldo should let his body rest, instead of stubbornly doing the impossible.
