For those who vented their frustrations on Cristiano Ronaldo, I have good news: our captain will score the 1000th goal at next year’s World Cup, and they will applaud!
Overall, Cristiano is the best football player of all time. He is also the most media-worthy human being in the history of humanity. However, he is a man. To his immeasurable talent, his ability to work and his iron will, he adds emotions like those of all of us, which here and there can take him back to a less happy moment. It was like that in the expulsion against Ireland. The usual rats rushed to social media and poured out their slogans of the frustrated: “he’s old, he doesn’t play at all, he cheated on the team”. On the way, they also knocked on the mister Roberto Martínez, who, in the meantime, responded with a 9-1 against Armenia.
Let’s go, then, in parts. Firstly, it wasn’t Cristiano who sank us in Ireland. When he was sent off, we were already 2-0 down. At most, he had his share of responsibility, shared by the eleven and the coach. It was a bad game, without a doubt. It happens. In this qualification I have already seen Italy take 3-0 against Norway, Germany lose 2-0 to Slovakia and France draw with Iceland. In football, the math is done at the end. And the truth is that we qualified and we will be there next summer, on American soil, to compete in the World Cup.
Secondly, this was Cristiano’s first expulsion for the national team: one in 226 games! For a player who was always at the center of the storm, who faced the toughest and most talented defenders in the world – who marked and provoked him mercilessly – it has to be said that it is perhaps the most correct in history. Haven’t been to Dragão? Yes, but it is tradition for injured or sidelined players to immediately return to their clubs — which, in this case, is in distant Saudi Arabia.
Third, Cristiano has been harassed since arriving in Ireland. Selector Heimir Hallgrímsson began by accusing Ronaldo of having “controlled” the refereeing in the first round game, in Alvalade, which we won 1-0. The tone was set. In Thursday’s game, the Irish defenders showed why they come from a great rugby nation, using their arms abundantly to stop the movement of a forty-year-old Portuguese man who still runs faster and jumps higher than them. In one of those moments, Cristiano made a move and was subsequently sent off. He wasn’t violent, he wasn’t the instigator – he just reacted. The referee did what had to be done; nothing to point out. And I don’t see anything that justifies a punishment longer than one game.
In short, in football not everything is logical, not everything is predictable. It is important that, when the final calculations are made, we are better than the opponent. We are going to the World Cup and I am sure that the captain’s armband will be on the arm of the one who loves our shirt so much and served so much — together with his exceptional colleagues and under the command of mister Martinez. And the 1000th goal was beautiful.
Professor