Cristiano Ronaldo is weighing up whether he has already played his last game for Portugal, days after walking out of the national squad following a breakdown with new head coach Jorge Jesus.
The contrast with his old rival is stark. Lionel Messi, 39, retired from international football after the World Cup and is expected to be given a hero’s farewell when Argentina host Benin in a friendly on Tuesday. Ronaldo, 41, chose to carry on with Portugal after the tournament — yet his own international career may have ended with him running down the tunnel at the final whistle of a game he did not play.
Events moved quickly. After the World Cup, Portugal replaced Roberto Martinez with Jesus, who had been Ronaldo’s boss at Al-Nassr last season. Ronaldo started the 1-0 win over Wales and, less than two weeks ago, said he still believed he could help the national team reach what it wanted. He was then told he would be on the bench against Norway in the Nations League, asked to warm up for much of the game, and remained an unused substitute in a Portugal match for the first time in 18 years. When the final whistle went, he headed down the tunnel instead of joining his team-mates in front of the supporters.
Guillem Balague, who wrote a book about Ronaldo in 2015, said: “He gets asked to warm up for the whole of the second half, practically. There are tacit rules in football: you don’t do that to Pele, to Diego Maradona, to Lionel Messi, to Cristiano, right? That’s what he’s seen, that you don’t do that to those kind of players.”
Jesus said there had been no falling out, but confirmed Ronaldo would not start the next game against Denmark either. At that point Ronaldo left the training camp and wrote on social media that, in due course, he would tell the Portuguese people the truth about his reasons for leaving the national team to which he had always been dedicated.
Portuguese FA president Pedro Proenca flew to Copenhagen, landing at 02:30 in the morning, to try to smooth things over with Ronaldo, but the attempt failed. He has since said Ronaldo is in the national team on sporting merit and that the forward must be paid tribute. Talks between Ronaldo, his representatives and the federation are ongoing as they look for a solution.
After Portugal beat Norway on Sunday in their final Nations League match, again without Ronaldo, Jesus said: “If he wants to, he’ll return to the national team. We can talk before the next call-up, but Cris is the one who’s going to decide. He’s the one who should decide how he wants to end his time with the national team.” Jesus has insisted Ronaldo would be welcome back.
The supporters are split. In Lisbon, billboards went up praising Ronaldo and criticising Jesus — thanking him for everything he did for Portugal, calling him “always our captain”, and accusing the coach of a lack of sensitivity, of treating a captain wrongly and of an inflated ego. One was placed next to the Estádio da Luz, home of Benfica, whom Jesus led to three league titles. At the Denmark game, some fans wore T-shirts spelling out “Love you Jesus”, while others were head-to-toe in Ronaldo merchandise. Newspaper coverage differed, too: Record, in which the forward owns shares, said “Ronaldo leaves after clash with Jesus”; Jornal de Notícias described “the end of a historic era”; Bola called it “a sad goodbye” and Jogo went with “CR7 turns his back on the national team”. Videos were posted online of angry fans ripping up Portugal jerseys, and Jesus and Proenca were booed leaving a building in Copenhagen.
Portugal fan Maria Ribeiro, from Lisbon, said: “It is so hard for all us fans. We all love him but it is getting too much now. It is hard to imagine Portugal without Ronaldo but maybe this is the time. There is too much arguing between ourselves.”
Whether Portugal would actually miss him is not straightforward. Ronaldo has scored 146 goals in 234 caps, both world records, and is chasing a record 1,000 career goals, having scored 979 across Portugal, Sporting, Manchester United, Real Madrid, Juventus and Al-Nassr. In the last nine years, Portugal’s win percentage without him is slightly better — 64% to 63% — and they have scored 2.7 goals a game without him compared with 2.1 with him. Their two biggest wins in history, 9-0 over Luxembourg and 9-1 against Armenia, came in the last two qualifying matches he missed, both through suspension.
Ronaldo scored three goals at the World Cup but could not make an impact in Portugal’s last-16 defeat by Spain, after which BBC pundit Chris Sutton said he was “waddling around the pitch like a grandad”. His former Manchester United team-mate Wayne Rooney said: “He is a genius, a superstar. What he has given to football and millions of people is something very rare. He will be disappointed because he believed he could win this tournament. But time gets us all. It’s a sad day for football.”
Journalist Marcus Alves, who covers Portugal, said: “How much gratitude is enough? That’s a question that Portuguese fans have been asking for a few years now. The whole soap opera that seems to follow the mere presence of the 41-year-old striker got to a point where patience was running out. Of Portugal’s last five coaches, Ronaldo had issues with four of them – Carlos Queiroz, Paulo Bento, Fernando Santos and now Jesus. That’s too much distraction when Portugal have arguably their best generation ever.”
Ahead of Portugal’s next match, against Denmark in November, the decision now rests with Ronaldo.