Portugal’s Outstanding Win Against Switzerland Marked The End Of Cristiano Ronaldo’s Leading Man Status

December 6^th will go down as the day when Cristiano Ronaldo’s role as a leading man was consigned to history.

This had already been the case at club level, where he’d spectacularly burned bridges at Manchester United in a way that made it unfathomable that he’d ever kick a ball for them again.

In truth, United coach Erik Ten Hag had scarcely used Ronaldo, not for the biggest games, opting to field him on Thursday night, Europa League games. Ronaldo burning bridges at United will hardly affect them on the pitch, all it merely did was damage his legacy.

Ronaldo now finds himself club less after both he and United decided to rescind his contract with seven months remaining. Now a free agent, Ronaldo will have no doubt hoped that some of the European heavyweights, perhaps someone with the need of a clinical finisher, will come knocking.

And that may still happen, but it feels unlikely. Most can see what the 2022 version of Ronaldo now brings to the table: little mobility and the demand to play a central role in any given team he’s in, despite the detrimental effect his very presence brings.

He’s denied rumours of a move to Saudi Arabia, but there is an element of denial in Ronaldo about the wane of his once-mighty powers: a player who was such a clutch player for so many years now having to face up to his mortality as he enters the Indian summer stage of his career.

But still, at international level, he was still the man, at the apex of the Portugal side of which he has loomed large over for the better part of 20 years. Since the golden generation of Luis Figo and Manuel Rui Costa sauntered off into retirement in the mid-2000s, all eyes have been firmly on Ronaldo ever since. He’s been the country’s leading light in football, but that light has become blurred in recent times.

In the 6-1 demolition of Switzerland in the round of 16, that light diminished once and for all.

Ronaldo had started all of Portugal’s games at the World Cup, but they’d looked stodgy. Moreover, Ronaldo has only scored once at the tournament, a penalty in the win against Ghana in their opening fixture. He tried to claim Bruno Fernandes’ goal in the game against Uruguay, when it was clear for all to see that he failed to make contact with the ball, only for FIFA to rightly award the goal to Fernandes.

Substituted against South Korea in the final group stage, Ronaldo, as he’s keen to do these days, didn’t take kindly to such actions and stormed off. This, for Portugal coach Fernando Santos, was the last straw.

Ronaldo was dropped for the Switzerland game, and the difference in performance was palpable.

Portugal demolished the Swiss in arguably the best team performance of the tournament, scoring the same number of goals in one 90-minute match that they had done in the previous 270 minutes with Ronaldo on the field. There was verve, an unleashed energy about Portugal that has been missing for years. They were quick, dynamic and played majestic football. Yes, they were enabled by how bad Switzerland were, especially in the second half, but it was clear for all to see that the Portuguese players relished playing without having to cater to Ronaldo’s every need, a renewed vibrancy that had been lacking in their previous games in Qatar.

Portugal arguably matched Brazil’s win against South Korea as the most complete of the tournament thus far, and it has in the process signalled the death knell for Ronaldo as an automatic starter. Given how brilliant they were against Switzerland, the chances of Santos reinstating Ronaldo to the line up for the quarter final clash against Morocco are slim.

Ronaldo now needs to come to terms with the fact that he’s going to be a bit-part player; the sands of time have finally caught up to the ultra professional, the man who did everything to stay ahead of the pack; the player who almost invented the term ‘marginal gains’ in football.

What remains to be seen is how he will digest his relegation to supporting cast going forward.