Cristiano Ronaldo has walked out on the Portugal squad, and the fallout has become the biggest story in the country. The row was sparked by head coach Jorge Jesus’s decision to leave the 41-year-old on the bench, and it led Wednesday evening’s news broadcasts in Portugal and made the front page of virtually every major newspaper.
The country has split into two camps. For some, Ronaldo was right to walk out on the squad days after spending half an hour warming up against Norway without being brought on, which they read as an apparent provocation by Jesus. For others, the forward’s behaviour was intolerable and his departure a matter of time, particularly once he found himself face to face with such a strong-minded head coach. Ronaldo’s supporters have defended him fiercely on social media, while much of the general public feels he has turned his back on the national team — a message splashed in big letters across the front page of O Jogo, one of Portugal’s leading sports newspapers.
According to Jesus, he and Ronaldo had a verbal agreement that the 41-year-old would not start against Norway on Sunday, three days after he had played 67 minutes against Wales in the coach’s first match, but would come on. During the game, which Portugal won 2-1, those plans changed: Ronaldo remained an unused substitute, with Jesus making the decision for tactical reasons. Ronaldo reportedly viewed the incident as a humiliation. The first signs of the breakdown came immediately after the final whistle, when Ronaldo left the pitch and did not join his teammates as they saluted their supporters in Oslo.
Ronaldo’s frustration with Jesus reportedly reached astronomical levels during the manager’s press conference on Wednesday. Asked about keeping Ronaldo on the bench, the 72-year-old asserted absolute control, in essence making clear that Ronaldo did not run the team and would not be able to change or influence the tactics — a transparent message to the player and to the Portuguese football federation that the manager is in charge. “I can promise whatever I want,” Jesus said. “I’m the coach and I told the player that he wasn’t going to play. I told him I would take him to the bench and that, if I needed him for 30 minutes, he would play. But I saw the game differently, so he didn’t come on. It won’t be Cristiano, or any other player, who changes my ideas as a coach. Never. Neither him nor anyone else. Not even a president. Never. Zero.” Jesus also stated his intention to start Gonçalo Ramos rather than Ronaldo in Monday’s game.
What followed is what everyone has seen: Ronaldo abruptly left the team hotel, boarded a plane and posted on social media, promising to reveal the truth soon. He has said he will tell his side of the story, while Jesus is due to speak on Thursday night after the Nations League match in Denmark. If a confrontation between these two huge personalities had been simmering in the background, it was already visible in July, when Jesus was inevitably asked at his first press conference with the team how his relationship with Ronaldo would work. The coach, who had worked with Ronaldo at Al-Nassr, answered categorically: “Cris will never be a problem for the national team or for me,” he said, insisting he had the player’s temperament under control. The harmony did not last long.
In Portugal, much of the reaction has split along predictable lines. Across the media, most newspapers and commentators have sided with the view that Ronaldo behaved selfishly. There are, however, some voices — particularly at newspapers and television outlets in which Ronaldo is a shareholder — who have turned their criticism towards Jesus, accusing him of ingratitude and of indefensibly going back on his word.
In many ways, the argument is a repeat of the debate over Ronaldo’s automatic place in the starting XI at this summer’s World Cup, and Roberto Martínez’s decision to keep the captain on the pitch for the full 90 minutes in all but one of the five matches, despite there being no obvious tactical or physical explanation for it. Even when Ronaldo came off in the last 32 against Croatia, it was not until the 81st minute.
Ronaldo is now at risk of a Portuguese football federation suspension of between one and six months, as well as a fine, for breaching its disciplinary code. In the absence of both men’s accounts, rumours are spreading like wildfire, with some publications claiming Ronaldo will never return to the national team. After 234 appearances over the past 23 years and 146 goals, the question hanging over Portuguese football is whether this is how he will say goodbye to his country.
Some observers believe there has been a decline in Ronaldo’s communication since he split almost four years ago from the agent Jorge Mendes, after giving an interview to Piers Morgan that triggered his departure from Manchester United. The Ronaldo-Mendes friendship and family connection reportedly remain intact, but the player is now managed by a team he assembled himself, and some have questioned whether he is surrounded by too many yes-men, without enough people willing or able to tell him when something risks creating a negative image.