“Inexplicable moments,” declared Cristiano Ronaldo, as portentously as you would expect from a man who earns £2.5 million for each Instagram message sent to his 633 million followers. It was perhaps the politest way he could have described his own performance during Portugal’s victory over Slovenia. A more fitting label, as you watched him designate every free-kick for himself and throw his arms about in disgust as Petar Stojanovic had the temerity to dispossess him, was “inexcusable”.
At 39, Ronaldo justifies his alpha preening on the basis of 130 international goals – double the total of Harry Kane, England’s record scorer. The trouble is that he now turns each game for his country into a histrionic vaudeville act, with every misplaced pass and self-pitying pout setting off a starburst of smartphone flashes. He is so ungovernably famous that he attracts influencers whose sole purpose for attending his matches is to amplify the hero worship.
Svetlana Alekseeva, a Russian social media personality, has created an entire industry out of the religion of “CR7”. As she filmed Ronaldo’s successful penalty in the shoot-out against Slovenia, mitigating the pain of his earlier miss, she turned the camera on herself to capture her carefully orchestrated awe.
Somehow, a single player has become the magnet for malignant narcissists everywhere. And when you studied his shamelessly self-aggrandising behaviour en route to a European Championship quarter-final, you started to understand why.
Two of his free-kicks sailed wretchedly over the bar. The one goal he pretended to have scored was wildly offside. Vanja Drkusic, a 24-year-old centre-back for Sochi, the Russian Premier League club who have just been relegated, all but marked him out of the game.
But still he flounced and pranced as if he were the one true saviour. Each time he failed to reach a ball he would have buried 15 years earlier, he looked to the heavens as if cursing some celestial conspiracy. Perish the thought that these were simply the errors of an ageing star.
Even his manager, Roberto Martínez, has been swept along by the narrative of Ronaldo the untouchable, offering the world one last glimpse of his divine skill. For all his breadth of experience, with six years in charge of Belgium, the 50-year-old sounded in the aftermath like some starry-eyed fan-boy.
“I thanked him afterwards for being the way he is, for caring for the group,” Martínez said. “I was certain that he would be the first penalty-taker and show us the way. I think we’re all very proud of our captain. He gave us all a lesson.”
Quite the homily for somebody who had produced a four-out-of-10 evening at best and whom he would have had every right to hook at half-time.
Perhaps Martínez has learned from what happens to those who dare to treat Ronaldo like a mere mortal. Fernando Santos dropped him, perfectly justifiably, for a 2022 World Cup group game against Switzerland, which Portugal won 6-1. Not only did he lose his job straight after the tournament, despite reaching the quarter-finals, he divulged that Ronaldo had blanked him ever since.
As such, we now have the exaggerated alternate reality, in which the manager treats a player who has failed to score with 59 of 60 free-kicks in national colours like a living deity.
While there might be many reasons to criticise the BBC’s football coverage, their decision to caption a picture of Ronaldo crying with the words “Misstiano Penaldo” is not one of them. “This is a disgrace,” thundered John Terry. Not really, John. Ronaldo has wept so often at the scene of intense personal struggle that you can no longer work out whether the emotion is sincere or confected.
Take the Euro 2016 final, for instance, where he came off after eight minutes with a knee injury and promptly burst into tears. The spectacle smacked less of sorrow for the teetering Portuguese cause than of melancholy at his own diminished involvement. It is a common thread through many of his theatrical reactions.
His petulant kick at the turf when he was replaced during defeat by Georgia last week was a case in point. Nobody could be sure why he was even playing, given Portugal had already won the group. So was he lashing out at the humiliating scoreline, or what failing to score in the group phase for the first time in six such tournaments would mean for his personal statistics?
It is hardly unreasonable to lean towards the second interpretation. This elongated autumn of Ronaldo’s career has become the ultimate exercise in devotion to himself. Just as it strains credulity that he is paid £177 million a year to wind down the clock at the second-best club in Riyadh, it is even more extraordinary that Portugal must now shoulder the baggage of his oversized ego, yet again subordinating the collective to this one stunningly precious individual.
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