Monday 15th November 2021
Will he miss his fifth World Cup?
This bankruptcy makes Ronaldo suffer badly
If you ask a lot of experts, Cristiano Ronaldo is the best footballer in the world. And that’s part of a world championship. It is not that easy. And because Portugal loses against Serbia in qualifying, the southern Europeans have to do an extra round. It is extremely painful.
Cristiano Ronaldo would have liked to save himself this treacherous detour. While other superstars such as Kylian Mbappé, Neymar or Kevin De Bruyne and their teams have already booked the tickets and can look forward to the Winter World Cup in Qatar, the upcoming Christmas season will be exciting for the 36-year-old Portugal leader November 26th – shortly before the first Advent – the European playoffs will be drawn. What sounds irrelevant is the last chance for Ronaldo and the proud football nation Portugal to avert a disgraceful qualification failure.
Correspondingly sad and served, Ronaldo crouched on Sunday evening after the painful 1: 2 setback against Serbia on the lawn of the Estadio da Luz in Lisbon. The fifth participation in the World Cup? The unique chance to be the first player to score goals in five World Cup finals? Everything is now at stake for CR7 and Co. “Football has shown us time and time again that sometimes the most difficult paths lead to the best results. Yesterday’s result was tough, but not enough to get us down,” wrote Ronaldo on Instagram on Monday.
Despite the disappointing appearance and the well-deserved bankruptcy at the last minute, the camp of the European champions from 2016 continues to be confident. “The goal of going to the 2022 World Cup is still there and we know what we have to do to get there. No excuses,” said Ronaldo. In view of the feasible group with Serbia and Ireland as the strongest opponents, this goal should actually have been achieved directly.
Harsh criticism of the trainer
In fact, the playoffs in March 2022 are a tough knockout mill: Twelve teams, three tickets, only one duel each, at the respective finals even home rights will be drawn by lot. With possible opponents such as Austria, Wales or Sweden with old star Zlatan Ibrahimovic, a bad day can be enough for Portugal to miss a major tournament for the first time since 1998.
Long-term coach Fernando Santos has to put up with harsh criticism. The extremely broad squad around Ronaldo and the other stars like Bernardo Silva or Bruno Fernandes has a lot of potential, but fails again and again because of itself. “We have always been there. Why shouldn’t we do it? I think I have the ability have to lead Portugal to Qatar, “said Santos on Sunday evening. It sounded more like optimism.
Santos also admitted after his own passive performance: “It’s my responsibility.” His European championship bonus seems to be used up more and more, especially since the 2016 title came off rather happily with three draws in the group phase and three further knockout successes in overtime or penalty shoot-outs. The 2018 and 2021 tournaments (each out of the round of 16) were disappointing in view of the strong line-up, but at least the qualification has always been mastered so far.
This is one of the reasons why the Portuguese media outdid themselves on Monday with harsh criticism and dubbed the missed early Qatar ticket either as “world shame” (“Record”), “total darkness” (“O Jogo”) or “miserable” (“A Bola”) ). It’s a foretaste of what Portugal and Ronaldo face if things don’t go as they should in spring 2022. A warning example is European champions Italy, who failed in the playoffs before the 2018 World Cup. Portugal had to take this detour before 2010 (against Bosnia-Herzegovina) and 2014 (against Sweden).