Benched for a critical knockout game, Cristiano Ronaldo was once again all anyone wanted to talk about when it came to Portugal. But after a 6–1, last-16 win over Switzerland, it was his 21-year-old replacement, Gonçalo Ramos, who had the spotlight.
In his first World Cup start, Ramos scored a hat trick in 67 minutes to lead Portugal’s rout of the Swiss, who had stunned France in the knockouts at Euro 2020, and send Portugal into the World Cup quarterfinals for just the third time.
Ronaldo started all three of Portugal’s group stage games and scored the nation’s opening goal against Ghana, but he was taken off in the second half of a group-closing defeat to South Korea as manager Fernando Santos had expressed frustration with his attitude. Yet when Ronaldo came on late in the second half, the crowd erupted for the forward while Portugal’s newest hat-trick hero went off.
