It ended with a goal from a tall, slightly ungainly figure driving through the centre-forward position – but perhaps not the one that the narrative demanded. In injury time, Mikel Merino ran on to Ferran Torres’s through-ball and, with an impressive calm after a scrappy game that had largely lacked it, rolled the winner past Diogo Costa. He celebrated, as he had at the Euros two years ago, with a run around the corner flag, echoing his father’s celebration after scoring for Osasuna in Stuttgart in 1991, while at the other end, another centre-forward slumped. For Cristiano Ronaldo, this was the end.
In truth, Ronaldo’s end has been coming for at least four years, since the last-16 tie at the Qatar World Cup when he was left out against Switzerland and his replacement Gonçalo Ramos scored a hat-trick in a 6-1 win. It wouldn’t be fair to say he bowed out not with a bang but with a whimper, because in truth it wasn’t even that. This was the least effective of farewells.
It was also about Ronaldo. It’s always about Ronaldo. Even when he does nothing – these days, especially when he does nothing – it’s always about Ronaldo. His press-conference performance on Sunday was remarkable. There were jibes, there were jokes, there was a poignant sense of an athlete reluctantly accepting that he is coming to the end of the road, and also, at times, an extraordinary level of self-pity.
The comparison is obvious, too simple and, to a degree, invidious, but it’s also true. As Lionel Messi has aged, as his body has begun to fail him, he has become smarter, rationing his running, taking up unusual positions, drifting around the pitch like a sprite, uninvolved until the moment he suddenly is involved. Ronaldo, though, remains largely central in his lumberings; he is not usefully or effectively peripheral. He demands the ball constantly. Team-mates seem to feel compelled to pass to him. Occasionally he drifts wide or deep, but that just makes things worse. Most of what was best about Portugal, the slick interchanges, the beguiling patterns came when he wasn’t involved.
There were the familiar posturings: baffling slow stepovers that only serve to remind how good he used to be, shrugs and pleas to teammates and the officials, grimaces and gurning at the spectacular unfairness of the world, one forceful shot struck straight at Unai Simón and one half-hit flick goalwards after Simón had parried a João Félix header. There’s also the odd phenomenon of the Ronaldo ultras, who booed Lamine Yamal and roared in fury every time their hero went down and looked plaintively at the referee, which was quite a lot. He increasingly resembles the kid whose ball it is who has to be indulged.
Leaving Ronaldo aside, if that’s not too implausible a concept in a World Cup that has given itself wholeheartedly to the cult of celebrity, this was a battle of two highly gifted midfields and, for the most part, Spain had the better of that. Again and again, particularly in the first few minutes, Portugal were caught in possession in their own half. There is a real sense of that Spanish unit clicking, with Rodri, slowly, starting to look again like the player he was in the Euros, before his ACL injury. There are times when he bosses a situation with the dismissive calm of a parent playing in a children’s game.
The better chances in the early stages were almost all Spain’s as Mikel Oyarzabal fired a one-on-one wide and an Álex Baena curler drew a remarkable flailing save from Diogo Costa. Dani Olmo kept finding himself in space, only for his passes to be cut out or narrowly to fail to find their mark. But Portugal defended well and Nuno Mendes, not for the first time, seemed to have the measure of Lamine Yamal, whose influence was limited. A fine game for the full-back very nearly became a great one as his drive six minutes before the break flicked off Pedro Porro and smacked the crossbar.
But 10 minutes into the second half, the Paris Saint-Germain full-back stretched to block a Lamine Yamal shot and seemingly tweaked something. As soon as he went down it was clear the problem was serious. Mendes shook his head sadly, and was helped away, to be replaced by the former Wolves stalwart Nélson Semedo, who is more naturally a right-back. That change seemed only to enhance the sense of caution that had crept over the game towards the end of the first half, the creeping realisation that this was going to be close, and that one error could prove decisive.
after newsletter promotion
With Mendes gone, Yamal’s influence grew but still the worry from the group stage, mitigated to an extent against Austria in the last 32, lingered: this is not a Spain with the cutting edge of the Euros two years ago. Yamal, perhaps because of his injury, has been less effective in this tournament than he was then, and none of the players who have operated in the left have offered the same threat as Nico Williams did.
But they had enough, and so it is they who will go on to face the United States or Belgium in the quarter-final in Los Angeles on Friday.
Leave a Reply