AND SO PORTUGAL stumble out of the Euros, weighed down by their very own Alphatross around their neck.
Tonight they can be said to have been the only team even mildly interested in contributing some football to a miserably drab occasion. This was the kind of thing designed for people who can’t watch paint dry as they might feel a bit heady from the fumes.
France, it must be stressed, were wretched and meagre, but Portugal let a golden chance for victory slip by persisting with their waxwork totem up front. Ronaldo hasn’t offered anything off the ball for a few years now, but at this tournament that impotence has come to encompass his on-ball work.
For the first time, Ronaldo leaves a major tournament without scoring a goal, and it’s now 12 games since he scored a tournament goal from open play, against Germany in the group phase of the previous Euros. That shouldn’t be a criticism of Ronaldo: he’s 39. But that he played more minutes at this tournament than any other of Portugal’s outfield players is an obvious absurdity. He went 120 minutes against Slovenia on Monday and went another 120 minutes tonight, with Diogo Jota and Goncalo Ramos sitting on the bench.
But Roberto Martinez’ faith in Ronaldo is as unshakable as Ronaldo’s in himself. Hence he started again tonight, and he spent the game’s preamble wearing a kind of manically positive, Graham-Norton-in-Father-Ted-style energy. Oh me? Don’t worry about me guys. I am totally fine. Honestly. Totally fine.
Because how can there be a dying of the light if you can’t see him raging?
He waved to the crowd and clapped team-mates on the back with a rictus grin, had warm pre-game words for Kylian Mbappe and Michael Oliver, and then exaggerated a weird, ‘we’ll shoot……THATAWAY!!’ pause-and-then-point when he got to choose ends after the coin toss. The shtick went so far that he wound up for a first-half free-kick and then let Bruno Fernandes whack it over the crossbar. That was a one-time only offer.
His whole demeanour called to mind Oscar Wilde’s line in the Picture of Dorian Gray that “the basis of optimism is sheer terror.” Portugal’s Euros has been a grand, glitzy touring show in which Ronaldo sashays about trying to convince the world he has still got it. Call it the Some Eras Don’t End Tour. And Roberto Martinez is standing by the stage, wearing friendship bracelets up to his elbows.
As to why he does is utterly baffling. Here was another night in which Ronaldo wandered about a football pitch on which he did not belong purely because of Who He Is, like Salt Bae after the last World Cup final.
Ronaldo registered all of 11 touches in the first half: the fewest of any player on the pitch. The majority of them were to facilitate and then execute backwards passes. At one point he chased a quick through ball from Bruno Fernandes, only for William Saliba to chew up Ronaldo’s headstart and beat him to possession.
Ronaldo can be said to have put the whole game in check. As the second half wore on, he kept urging team-mates to sling the ball in the box for him, and then threw his arms up in frustration when they instead chose to turn back and recycle possession. It was hard to blame them for doing so: they may not have fancied Ronaldo in the air against Saliba, but even if they did, it was too risky a move, given France were coiled and ready to spring on the counter-attack. And whichever of the Portugal players who would have been lumped with the job of chasing Mbappe, they knew Ronaldo wouldn’t be joining them in those trenches.
But while Ronaldo limited what Portugal were trying to do, they were at least trying to do something. This was an egregious non-performance from France, marred by a truly miserable lack of attacking verve. Didier Deschamps’ side have always made a virtue out of doing Just Enough, but they are now stretching that principles to its outer limits. France’s five games in the tournament so far have featured four goals: three of them were penalties and the other one was an own-goal. Here’s hoping Spain are too be good to be ground down by this.
Tonight France started with Antoine Griezmann restored to a central, number 10 position and brimmed with intent for about three minutes. Griezmann then faded and was hooked in the second half. Without him, France created nothing.
Portugal did at least try to redeem the night by creating a few chances of their own, but found Ronaldo wanting when they did. Vitinha burst into the box to take a cut-back from Rafael Leao, but when his snap effort was blocked by Mike Maignan, Ronaldo didn’t have the spring of old to attack the rebound. Diogo Jota must have felt his hamstrings twitching on the bench.
His act of charity to Fernandes already paid, Ronaldo felt liberated to stride over to a wide free-kick later in the second half. Here was an actual chance to loft a cross into the box on top of Ronaldo but…no. He wound up in characteristic fashion and then blasted the ball into the wall.
It wasn’t difficult to picture Anthony Barry on the sideline, looking poignantly at his thick binder of inventive set-pieces to be taken from the right flank, now jutting out of a bin.
Just as it was against Slovenia, Ronaldo had the opportunity to Stick it to the Critics, and this time his opportunity was in front of the penalty spot. The fabulously lively Francisco Conceicao skipped to the endline and this time pulled the ball back to where Ronaldo was standing, only for him to send his effort vaulting into the stand. Conceicao rushed to Ronaldo and told him to get his head up.
Not that France gave him anything to regret too soon. They offered so little in attack that Mbappe – clearly struggling with the pain of his broken nose – was withdrawn for the final half of extra-time.
Ronaldo creditably converted his penalty via his new, stuttering technique, celebrating by telling everyone to calm down, his mouth curled downwards in sour superciliousness like Marlon Brando in the Godfather.
If the message was I got this, it was delivered much too late. Now Portugal’s fate would revolve between different sets of hands, and ultimately Joao Felix fumbled it by hitting the post.
Ronaldo held a weeping Pepe on his shoulder and then walked with calm resignation down the tunnel and out of view.
Ronaldo’s time at the elite end of the sport he has defined and then defied for so long is over. It has been over since the last World Cup, but Roberto Martinez has cost Portugal a shot at another European Championship in refusing to acknowledge it.
