So this was how it ended for Cristiano Ronaldo. Not with the ultimate glory but a certain predictability. Portugal’s World Cup was curtailed in a manner that was all too foreseeable: with Ronaldo failing to score, with younger men being removed as he stayed on the pitch, with the sense that their most famous player had been put before the team, perhaps for one last time.
His sixth World Cup will be his last, he had said. In a career as long as his, history can repeat itself. Portugal went out 1-0 to Spain in the last 16 in 2010. Sixteen years later, the same scoreline sent Spain into the last eight for the first time since their victorious campaign in South Africa. The dead-eyed finish from Mikel Merino won a local derby that was transported to Texas.
