Culture
Cristiano Ronaldo cannot rage against the dying of the light forever
For a second, Cristiano Ronaldo looked like he might be on the edge of tears. Then suddenly, no, he was over the edge. The floodgates had opened and he was bawling now. In front of a capacity crowd in Frankfurt and a huge global television audience, arguably the most famous athlete on the planet was in floods of tears.
And there was still a game to be won, a place in the Euro 2024 quarter-finals to be secured.
It was astonishing to witness. The Portugal captain had endured another frustrating evening, still chasing his first goal of the tournament, and now, having been given the chance to break Slovenia’s resistance, he had seen a penalty saved brilliantly by goalkeeper Jan Oblak. The tension and anguish that had been building inside him suddenly boiled over.
Ronaldo had missed penalties before, sometimes in highly pressurised circumstances. He had cried on the pitch before: tears of sadness, tears of joy. But this was different because the game wasn’t finished. At 39, playing in what he admits will be his final European Championship, he was crying not for a lost match but, it seemed, for the waning of his powers. They resembled the tears of a matinee idol who realises he is facing his final curtain.
For once he looked so vulnerable, so fallible, so… human. As Portugal’s players formed a huddle during half-time in extra time, they looked up and saw what looked like a broken man. One by one, they tried to raise him. His former Manchester United team-mates Bruno Fernandes and Diogo Dalot grabbed him, as if to remind him who he was — who he still is. Fulham midfielder Joao Palhinha and Manchester City defender Ruben Dias did similar.
A tearful Ronaldo is consoled by Dalot at half-time of extra time (Justin Setterfield/Getty Images)
It was remarkable that Portugal coach Roberto Martinez kept him out there in the circumstances. Ronaldo looked done. He barely touched the ball for the remainder of extra time as Slovenia, for the first time all evening, began to look the more likely to snatch victory.
It went down to a penalty shootout. What if Ronaldo missed again?
He didn’t. This time, he slammed his shot to the other side, Oblak’s right, and looked immensely relieved when the net bulged. That took courage, but there was no bravado in his reaction. It wasn’t the time for his trademark celebration. Instead, his clasped his hands to the Portugal supporters in apology.
Within three minutes, Portugal’s players and supporters were celebrating victory. Their goalkeeper Diogo Costa was the hero, saving all three of Slovenia’s kicks while Ronaldo, Bruno Fernandes and Bernardo Silva converted theirs. It was an extraordinary performance from Costa, who had also made a vital save to deny Slovenia forward Benjamin Sesko late in extra time. Ronaldo, overcome with relief, embraced and thanked him.
“There was initial sadness — and joy at the end,” the five-time Ballon d’Or winner told Portuguese TV station RTP afterwards. “That’s what football brings: inexplicable moments from the eighth (minute) to the 80th. That’s what happened today. Did I have the opportunity to give the team the lead? I couldn’t do it.”
Ronaldo apologetically celebrates scoring in the shootout (Justin Setterfield/Getty Images)
He referred to his penalty record over the course of the season — “I didn’t fail once” — but he must know deep down that it is more than his penalty-taking that is under scrutiny at Euro 2024. Excluding the penalty shootout (as the record books always do), he is yet to score in his four appearances at the tournament. Other than a penalty against Ghana in Portugal’s opening game of the 2022 World Cup, he has now gone eight appearances without scoring in a major tournament.
Ronaldo scored 50 goals in 51 appearances in all competitions for Al Nassr last season. He has also scored 10 goals in nine appearances in the Euro 2024 qualifying campaign, but half of those came against Luxembourg and Liechtenstein. He is the record international goalscorer in men’s football, with a faintly preposterous record of 130 goals in 211 appearances — but the highest-ranked teams he has scored against in the past three years are Switzerland (19th), Qatar (35th), Slovakia (45th) and the Republic of Ireland (60th).
Yet he takes so many shots. So many shots — a total of 20 so far at this tournament, which is at least seven more than any other player. So many promising attacks and dangerous free kicks are sacrificed at the altar of self-indulgence. There was one free kick against Slovenia where, even in a stadium full of die-hard Ronaldo fans, he must have been the only person who thought he was going to score. Sure enough, his shot sailed way beyond the far post.
Then there are the shots he isn’t able to take because, as formidable as his physique might still appear, his acceleration, speed and power are no longer quite what they were. There was a point in the first half where Bernardo Silva drifted infield from the right wing and produced what looked the most delightful cross towards him at the far post. Ronaldo leapt but couldn’t reach it and, not for the first time at this tournament, you were left thinking he would have buried a chance like that in his prime.
But his prime was a long time ago now. Longer ago than he perhaps cares to imagine. He won the last of his Ballons d’Or in 2017 and, even by that stage, aged 32, he had become a far more economical player than the unstoppable, irrepressible force of his mid-to-late 20s.
Ronaldo beats Jan Oblak from the spot in the shootout (Harriet Lander – UEFA/UEFA via Getty Images)
Some will suggest this is a tournament too far for him, but similar was said at the World Cup in Qatar 18 months ago, where he made little impact and ended up losing his place to Goncalo Ramos. It now feels like two tournaments too far — or two tournaments in which Ronaldo might be better utilised as an option, perhaps coming off the bench at times, trading places with Ramos or Diogo Jota, rather than as the fixed point around which all else must revolve.
It was almost surprising to hear Ronaldo describe this, in the post-match mixed zone, as his last European Championship. “But I’m not emotional about that,” he said. “I’m moved by all that football means — by the enthusiasm I have for the game, the enthusiasm for seeing my supporters, my family, the affection people have for me.
“It’s not about leaving the world of football. What else is there for me to do or win? It’s not going to come down to one point more or one point less. Making people happy is what motivates me the most.”
What else is there for him to do or win? That didn’t sound like Ronaldo, particularly given the scenes we had witnessed earlier in the evening. He is right, of course — his legacy and place among the game’s immortals was secured long ago — but his reaction to that missed penalty was not that of someone who feels immune to the pressures of proving himself over and over and over again.
“He’s an example for us,” Martinez said afterwards. “Those emotions (after missing the penalty) were incredible. He doesn’t need to care that much after the career he has had and everything he has achieved. After missing the penalty, he was the first penalty-taker (in the shootout). I was certain he had to be first and show us the way to victory. The way he reacted is an example and we’re very proud.”
Lovely words, but Martinez has a big decision to make before Portugal’s quarter-final against France in Hamburg on Friday.
There have been many times over the years when Ronaldo has been the player to drag a team back from the brink, but on Monday night he looked beaten not just by Oblak’s penalty save but by the one opponent that catches up with every athlete in the end: time.
GO DEEPER
The cult of Cristiano Ronaldo
(Top photo: Alex Grimm/Getty Images)
Maybe you woke up this morning haunted by the first four lines of W.H. Auden’s “The More Loving One” — or tickled by its tongue-in-cheek handling of existential dread. (Not ringing any bells? Click here to begin the Poetry Challenge).
This is a love poem. Perhaps that seems like an obvious thing to say about a poem with “Loving” in its title, but there isn’t much romance in the opening stanza.
Looking up at the stars, I know quite well
That, for all they care, I can go to hell,
But on earth indifference is the least
We have to dread from man or beast.
Ada Limón, poet
Nonetheless, the poem soon makes clear that love is very much on its mind.
How should we like it were stars to burn
With a passion for us we could not return?
David Sedaris, writer
The polished informality gives the impression of a decidedly cerebral speaker — someone who’s looking at love philosophically, thinking about how it works and what it means.
If equal affection cannot be,
Let the more loving one be me.
Reginald Dwayne Betts, poet
Musing this way — arguing in this fashion — he stands in a long line of playful, thoughtful poetic lovers going back at least to the 16th century. He sounds a bit like Christopher Marlowe’s passionate shepherd:
Come live with me and be my love,
And we will all the pleasures prove,
That Valleys, groves, hills, and fields,
Woods, or steepy mountain yields.
Auden’s poem, like Marlowe’s, is written in four-beat lines:
How should we like it were stars to burn
With a passion for us we could not return?
Josh Radnor, actor
And it features strong end rhymes:
If equal affection cannot be,
Let the more loving one be me.
Samantha Harvey, writer
These tetrameter couplets represent a long-established poetic love language. Not too serious or sappy, but with room for both earnestness and whimsy. And even for professions of the opposite of love, as in this nursery rhyme, adapted from a 17th-century epigram:
I do not like thee, Doctor Fell
The reason why I cannot tell.
But this I know and know full well
I do not like thee, Doctor Fell.
There is some of this anti-love spirit in Auden’s poem too, but it mainly follows a general rule of love poetry: The person speaking is usually the more loving one.
This makes sense. To write a poem requires effort, art, inspiration. To speak in verse is to tease, to cajole, to seduce, all actions that suggest an excess of desire. That’s why it’s conventional to refer to the “I” in a poem like this as the Lover and the “you” as the Beloved. The line “Let the more loving one be me” could summarize a lot of the love poetry of the last few thousand years.
But who, in this case, is the beloved? This isn’t a poem to the stars, but about them. Or maybe a poem that uses the stars as a conceit and our complicated feelings about them as a screen for other difficult emotions.
What the stars have to do with love is a tricky question. The answer may just be that the poem assumes a relationship and then plays with the implications of its assumption.
This kind of play also has a long history. Since love is both abstract and susceptible to cliché, poets are eager to liken it to everything else under the sun: birds, bees, planets, stars, the movement of the tides and the cycle of the seasons. Andrew Marvell’s “Definition of Love,” from the 1600s, wraps its ardor in math:
As lines, so loves oblique may well
Themselves in every angle greet;
But ours so truly parallel,
Though infinite, can never meet.
The literary term for this is wit. The formidable 18th-century English wordsmith Samuel Johnson defined a type of wit as “a combination of dissimilar images, or discovery of occult resemblances in things apparently unlike.” “The most heterogeneous ideas are yoked by violence together,” he wrote; that kind of conceptual discord defines “The More Loving One.”
The second stanza is, when you think about it, a perfect non sequitur. A hypothetical, general question is asked:
How should we like it were stars to burn
With a passion for us we could not return?
Mary Roach, writer
The answer is a personal declaration that is moving because it doesn’t seem to apply only or primarily to stars:
If equal affection cannot be,
Let the more loving one be me.
Tim Egan, writer
Does this disjunction make it easier or harder to remember? Either way, these couplets start to reveal just how curious this poem is. We might find ourselves curious about who wrote them, and whom he might have loved. Tomorrow we’ll get to know Auden and his work a little better.
Play a game to learn it by heart. Need more practice? Listen to Ada Limón, Matthew McConaughey, W.H. Auden and others recite our poem.
Question 1/6
How should we like it were stars to burn
With a passion for us we could not return?
Tap a word above to fill in the highlighted blank.
Your task today: Learn the second stanza!
Let’s start with the first couplet in this stanza. Fill in the rhyming words.
Ready for another round? Try your hand at the 2025 Poetry Challenge.
Edited by Gregory Cowles, Alicia DeSantis and Nick Donofrio. Additional editing by Emily Eakin,
Joumana Khatib, Emma Lumeij and Miguel Salazar. Design and development by Umi Syam. Additional
game design by Eden Weingart. Video editing by Meg Felling. Photo editing by Erica Ackerberg.
Illustration art direction by Tala Safie.
Illustrations by Daniel Barreto.
Text and audio recording of “The More Loving One,” by W.H. Auden, copyright © by the Estate of
W.H. Auden. Reprinted by permission of Curtis Brown, Ltd. Photograph accompanying Auden recording
from Imagno/Getty Images.
Literature
Oedipa Maas from ‘The Crying of Lot 49’ (1966) by Thomas Pynchon
“The unforgettable, cartoonish protagonist of this unusually short novel is a California housewife accidentally turned private investigator and literary interpreter, and the mystery she’s attempting to solve — or, more specifically, the conspiracy she stumbles upon — is nothing less than capitalism itself,” says Ngai, 54. “As Oedipa traces connections between various crackpots, the novel highlights the peculiarly asocial sociality of postwar U.S. society, which gets figured as a network of alienations.”
Sula Peace from ‘Sula’ (1973) by Toni Morrison
“Sula arguably begins to disappear as soon as she’s introduced — despite the fact that the novel bears her name. Other characters die quickly, or are noticeably flat. This raises the politically charged question of who gets to ‘develop’ or be a protagonist in American novels and who doesn’t. The novel’s unusual character system is part of its meditation on anti-Black racism and historical violence.”
The speaker of ‘Lunch Poems’ (1964) by Frank O’Hara
“Lyric poems are fundamentally different from narrative fiction in part because they have speakers as opposed to narrators. Perhaps it’s a stretch to nominate the speaker of ‘Lunch Poems’ as a main character, but this book changed things by highlighting the centrality of queer counterpublics to U.S. culture as a whole, and by exploring the joys and risks of everyday intimacy with strangers therein.”
This interview has been edited and condensed.
More in Literature
See the rest of the issue
Let’s memorize a poem! Not because it’s good for us or because we think we should, but because it’s fun, a mental challenge with a solid aesthetic reward. You can amuse yourself, impress your friends and maybe discover that your way of thinking about the world — or even, as you’ll see, the universe — has shifted a bit.
Over the next five days, we’ll look closely at a great poem by one of our favorite poets, and we’ll have games, readings and lots of encouragement to help you learn it by heart. Some of you know how this works: Last year more Times readers than we could count memorized a jaunty 18-line recap of an all-night ferry ride. (If you missed that adventure, it’s not too late to embark. The ticket is still valid.)
This time, we’re training our telescopes on W.H. Auden’s “The More Loving One” — a clever, compact meditation on love, disappointment and the night sky.
Here’s the first of its four stanzas, read for us by Matthew McConaughey:
The More Loving One
Looking up at the stars, I know quite well
That, for all they care, I can go to hell,
But on earth indifference is the least
We have to dread from man or beast.
Matthew McConaughey, actor and poet
In four short lines we get a brisk, cynical tour of the universe: hell and the heavens, people and animals, coldness and cruelty. Commonplace observations — that the stars are distant; that life can be dangerous — are wound into a charming, provocative insight. The tone is conversational, mixing decorum and mild profanity in a manner that makes it a pleasure to keep reading.
Here’s Tracy K. Smith, a former U.S. poet laureate, with the second stanza:
How should we like it were stars to burn
With a passion for us we could not return?
If equal affection cannot be,
Let the more loving one be me.
Tracy K. Smith, poet
These lines abruptly shift the focus from astronomy to love, from the universal to the personal. Imagine how it would feel if the stars had massive, unrequited crushes on us! The speaker, couching his skepticism in a coy, hypothetical question, seems certain that we wouldn’t like this at all.
This certainty leads him to a remarkable confession, a moment of startling vulnerability. The poem’s title, “The More Loving One,” is restated with sweet, disarming frankness. Our friend is wearing his heart on his well-tailored sleeve.
The poem could end right there: two stanzas, point and counterpoint, about how we appreciate the stars in spite of their indifference because we would rather love than be loved.
But the third stanza takes it all back. Here’s Alison Bechdel reading it:
Admirer as I think I am
Of stars that do not give a damn,
I cannot, now I see them, say
I missed one terribly all day.
Alison Bechdel, graphic novelist
The speaker downgrades his foolish devotion to qualified admiration. No sooner has he established himself as “the more loving one” than he gives us — and perhaps himself — reason to doubt his ardor. He likes the stars fine, he guesses, but not so much as to think about them when they aren’t around.
The fourth and final stanza, read by Yiyun Li, takes this disenchantment even further:
Were all stars to disappear or die,
I should learn to look at an empty sky
And feel its total dark sublime,
Though this might take me a little time.
Yiyun Li, author
Wounded defiance gives way to a more rueful, resigned state of mind. If the universe were to snuff out its lights entirely, the speaker reckons he would find beauty in the void. A starless sky would make him just as happy.
Though perhaps, like so many spurned lovers before and after, he protests a little too much. Every fan of popular music knows that a song about how you don’t care that your baby left you is usually saying the opposite.
The last line puts a brave face on heartbreak.
So there you have it. In just 16 lines, this poem manages to be somber and funny, transparent and elusive. But there’s more to it than that. There is, for one thing, a voice — a thinking, feeling person behind those lines.
When he wrote “The More Loving One,” in the 1950s, Wystan Hugh Auden was among the most beloved writers in the English-speaking world. Before this week is over there will be more to say about Auden, but like most poets he would have preferred that we give our primary attention to the poem.
Its structure is straightforward and ingenious. Each of the four stanzas is virtually a poem unto itself — a complete thought expressed in one or two sentences tied up in a neat pair of couplets. Every quatrain is a concise, witty observation: what literary scholars call an epigram.
This makes the work of memorization seem less daunting. We can take “The More Loving One” one epigram at a time, marvelling at how the four add up to something stranger, deeper and more complex than might first appear.
So let’s go back to the beginning and try to memorize that insouciant, knowing first stanza. Below you’ll find a game we made to get you started. Give it a shot, and come back tomorrow for more!
Play a game to learn it by heart. Need more practice? Listen to Ada Limón, Matthew McConaughey, W.H. Auden and others recite our poem.
Question 1/6
Looking up at the stars, I know quite well That, for all they care, I can go to hell,
Tap a word above to fill in the highlighted blank.
Your first task: Learn the first four lines!
Let’s start with the first couplet. Fill in the rhyming words.
Monday
Love, the cosmos and everything in between, all in 16 lines.
Tuesday (Available tomorrow)
What’s love got to do with it?
Wednesday (Available April 22)
How to write about love? Be a little heartsick (and the best poet of your time).
Thursday (Available April 23)
Are we alone in the universe? Does it matter?
Friday (Available April 24)
You did it! You’re a star.
Ready for another round? Try your hand at the 2025 Poetry Challenge.
Edited by Gregory Cowles, Alicia DeSantis and Nick Donofrio. Additional editing by Emily Eakin,
Joumana Khatib, Emma Lumeij and Miguel Salazar. Design and development by Umi Syam. Additional
game design by Eden Weingart. Video editing by Meg Felling. Photo editing by Erica Ackerberg.
Illustration art direction by Tala Safie.
Illustrations by Daniel Barreto.
Text and audio recording of “The More Loving One,” by W.H. Auden, copyright © by the Estate of
W.H. Auden. Reprinted by permission of Curtis Brown, Ltd. Photograph accompanying Auden recording
from Imagno/Getty Images.
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