Cristiano Ronaldo has delivered the explanation he promised after leaving Portugal’s training camp, publishing a long first-person account of the events that led to his departure and accusing the national team coach — named in the report as Jorge Jesus — of breaking his word. The statement is signed October 6, 2026, and closes with the line: “Believe me, this is the plain truth.”
Ronaldo writes that after the 2026 World Cup he prepared a letter to the Portuguese people, which he still keeps, containing the words he wants to address to them when he definitively leaves the national team. On the return flight from the United States at the end of the competition, he says the President of the Portuguese Football Federation asked him, and insisted, that he reconsider his decision to leave because the FPF wanted him to continue. Immediately afterwards, the President asked for his opinion on the name of the current national team coach, whom he was considering alongside other names he did not reveal. Ronaldo says he replied that, in his opinion, it would be the right choice, and that he felt truly happy on the day the coach was introduced, describing it as the right option “as the results show.”
A few days later, he received an initial contact from the new national team coach, who said he would like to meet him in person, and they arranged the meeting for the end of his vacation. They met at Football City, where his club was holding its preseason training camp. According to Ronaldo, the coach told him he was counting on him and that his presence was essential to his project, and presented him with a plan for his participation right then: he would play the first and the last match and, for physical preparation reasons, the coach would always make three or four changes per match.
The coach, Ronaldo continues, suggested that he not travel with the national team to Norway and Denmark, proposing instead that he play the first match and stay in Portugal, then rejoin before the match at the Dragão stadium. Ronaldo says he immediately rejected the proposal, arguing that not playing the matches abroad did not mean he would not be the team captain and that such a privilege of staying in Portugal would not be a good example. In the end, the coach agreed with his analysis. Simão Coutinho, Al Nassr’s sporting director, attended the conversation.
On the eve of the training camp, Ronaldo says the head coach came to his house in Lisbon to speak with him again, at his own request. The conversation was calm and all the principles agreed in August were maintained. Ronaldo played the match at Alvalade and, although he was substituted, says he did not cause any problems. He personally put the captain’s armband on Bruno Fernandes, far from imagining that he might be taking his last steps as an athlete and captain of the national team. What mattered that day, he stresses, was the victory.
At lunchtime on the day of the match in Norway, an assistant to the national team coach came over to the table where the group was having lunch and told him the coach wanted to speak with him. To his “absolute surprise,” the coach asked whether he was okay to play 30 minutes. Ronaldo says he was completely focused on his physical recovery and thinking he would not play that day, but that he obviously said yes. He notes the request was outside his recovery and physical training plan, since he was only going to play on the 4th at the Dragão stadium. He warmed up from halftime, watched the minutes go by, and was not called on. “The coach had broken his word,” he writes. At the end of the match he did not go over to greet the fans — a mistake he says is solely his responsibility and should never have happened — and he apologises to the Portuguese people who supported the team, to the fans, and to those who travelled there to see him.
Forty-eight hours later, Ronaldo says he had a conversation with the coach and with Simão Coutinho, who had been following their conversations since August. He describes it as a profound and very frank moment, without filters. They agreed there was only one way to close the “case”: the coach would repeat, in the press room, what he had just told him in private. Under the agreement, the coach would begin the press conference with the topic, saying that Ronaldo never asked to play any minutes, that it was the coach and no one else who proposed the plan for the training camp, and that it was a mistake to make him warm up only not to play. The meeting ended with the coach asking him for a hug and promising to say at the press conference what he had just said, and with the understanding that Ronaldo would not play in Denmark but would play against Dragão. At the coach’s request, a videoconference was then held between the coach, Simão Coutinho and Tiago Craveiro, and a brief document was prepared, which Ronaldo personally reviewed and which he says was delivered to the coach.
Ronaldo says the press conference itself unfolded as expected, but that the coach’s attitude had nothing to do with their meeting: he perceived “expressions and aggression” he considers undeserved, an attitude of “I want, I can, and I command” that the coach had never shown him in private, not even remotely, the day before. He lists the notes he validated, in which the coach was to state that he personally proposed a plan for Ronaldo with no one else involved after a long and very good conversation; that he knows how much Ronaldo lives for the national team and the weight it carries, and the weight and positive influence he has had on it for 24 consecutive years; that the plan was accepted; that Ronaldo never questioned his decisions and was exemplary, loyal and professional; that the Norway match was not included in the plan, though the coach felt he had recovered physically and warned him he might use him, which Ronaldo agreed to; and that making “someone of Pelé or Maradona’s stature” warm up only not to play was a mistake he would not repeat. On the failure to greet the fans, the notes said that someone who has played more than 230 matches for the national team does not need lessons in love for Portugal, and that it was a moment of frustration.
Ronaldo stresses that none of those reports said the coach had apologised to him — in his words, the second time his word had been broken. He decided to leave the training camp without waiting for another broken promise. He says that in a conversation with the president of the Portuguese Football Federation and the coach on the morning of that press conference, which they can confirm, he reiterated that if they did not want him there they simply had to tell him, and that they answered in unison that his place was in the national team. He adds that in almost 25 years of his career he has never interfered in any technical or tactical decision of a coach or national team manager. He also apologises to his teammates for leaving the camp, saying the responsibility is exclusively his.
Ronaldo says the consequences of his actions must be evaluated and sanctioned by the Portuguese Football Federation, and that he believes the punishment should not be reduced, because as team captain he considers his position an aggravating factor and the rules are the same for everyone. He says he has heard a lot about farewell matches and that he can promise all his supporters, and especially the Portuguese people, that one or more farewell matches will be played — but that when he thinks about the national team, he thinks about competing. He recalls deciding to stay at the national team camp after receiving the news of his father’s death, until the match the next day was over, doing for the country what he says he would never do for any club. He concludes that if he is in good physical shape, playing for his club and scoring goals, he will be available, after serving his suspension, to compete and win with the national team.