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)
Where do you turn when you need advice? A chatbot? A life coach? A wise and trusted friend?
How about a poet? Poets may not be famous for making the best life choices, but because they subject the mess of human existence to the discipline of language, they can be as helpful as any therapist or mentor.
Good poets know the rules and when to break them, which is something they can teach the rest of us.
To wit:
Giving advice is a peculiar literary undertaking. It flourishes in certain popular genres — graduation speeches, newspaper columns, country and western songs and poems like this one — but what, in these contexts, is it really for?
I’m thinking of situations when you don’t urgently need help but nonetheless enjoy reading answers to questions you may not have thought to ask. What interests you isn’t the content of the advice — you could get all the life hacks you want from A.I. — so much as the voice of the person dispensing it.
Wendy Cope is an English poet, born in 1945, who has been a fixture of her country’s literary scene since the 1980s. More recently, her short, buoyant poem “The Orange” has been widely memed online, bringing her to the attention of new readers beyond Britain.
Cope favors rhyme, meter, brisk jokes and tart aperçus. She addresses romance, friendship and the petty absurdities of modern life with disarming good humor. The last line of “The Orange” is “I love you. I’m glad I exist.” Somehow she makes it the opposite of cringe.
This isn’t the kind of poetry you would describe as “confessional.” And yet …
Question 1/7
Stop, if the car is going “clunk”
Or if the sun has made you blind.
Don’t answer e–mails when you’re drunk.
Tap a word above to fill in the highlighted blank.Want to learn this poem by heart? We’ll help.
Fill in the missing words below. You can always refer to the reading by A.O. Scott and full
text above.Let’s start with the first stanza.
A strong sense of place can deeply influence a story, and in some cases, the setting can even feel like a character itself. This week’s literary geography quiz highlights places where authors were born (or lived) that later became locations in their books. To play, just make your selection in the multiple-choice list and the correct answer will be revealed. At the end of the quiz, you’ll find links to the works if you’d like to do further reading.
AMERICA, U.S.A.: How Race Shadows the Nation’s Anniversaries, by Eddie S. Glaude Jr.
For those of us in the national memory-keeping business, anniversaries hold near-totemic power. Satisfyingly round units of time, ideally bearing fancy, Latin-derived names, serve as the overburdened pegs on which to hang think pieces and museum exhibits, revisionist documentaries and maudlin public ceremonies. The arbitrary nature of such occasions is precisely what gives them their charge, inviting us to set aside complacency and submit to a comprehensive check-in.
In his new book, “America, U.S.A.,” Eddie S. Glaude Jr. presents an intriguing variation on the genre, seeing the country’s 250th birthday as an anniversary of anniversaries: 50 years since the malaise-ridden, schlock-heavy Bicentennial. A century since the subdued Prohibition-era Sesquicentennial. A century and a half since telegraphed reports of George Armstrong Custer’s defeat by the Lakota and Cheyenne at Little Bighorn rudely interrupted the Gilded Age Republic’s 100th birthday party.
If an anniversary offers a snapshot of a moment, the core of Glaude’s book is an old-timey photo album, a collection of notable episodes from earlier national reckonings, long-ago glances in the mirror. An estimable scholar of Black history, politics and religion at Princeton — best known for “Begin Again,” his 2020 meditation on James Baldwin’s relevance for our times — Glaude focuses, as his subtitle puts it, on “how race shadows the nation’s anniversaries.”
Such celebrations, he contends, have never really been the moments for honest self-reflection they are often advertised to be. Instead, the nation usually shatters the mirror, refusing to accept what it prefers not to see. “American anniversaries are often moments to turn a blind eye to the evils of the past and the present,” Glaude writes, “to suppress the fact of America’s divided soul.”
It’s a clever concept, and, needless to say, perfectly timed. Last year, Glaude notes, the Trump administration executed a hostile takeover of the government’s studiously bipartisan 250th anniversary planning. It is now preparing a program that is certain to conceal more than it reveals about the country ostensibly being celebrated.
Glaude, in no mood for celebration, argues that such omissions and evasions also defined commemorations in the past. In 1875, Frederick Douglass predicted “one grand Centennial hosannah of peace and good will to all the white race of this country.” He was right: The nation reached 100 years old at a crucial moment in the post-Civil War fight over racial equality, with white Northerners ready to give up on Southern Reconstruction. The occasion would help the once-warring sections to reunite around a shared commitment to white supremacy. On May 10, 1876, at the opening of the Centennial Exposition in Philadelphia, the police tried to bar Douglass from the grandstand, until a white politician vouched for him.
The 150th anniversary came soon after a resurgent Ku Klux Klan successfully pushed for a restrictive immigration law aimed at keeping America a “Nordic” nation. At the lavishly funded, lightly attended celebrations in Philadelphia, Black veterans of World War I were excluded from marching in the opening parade. A writer with The Associated Negro Press wondered “what was in the breast of those black men who fought to make America safe for Democracy and on Monday stood on the sidelines, forgotten, as the Nordic strode by in all his vain pride.”
By 1976, when the nation marked its Bicentennial, the violence of the ’60s had destroyed any semblance of consensus. Vietnam and Watergate had eroded trust in the government. The commission initially tasked with organizing the anniversary was disbanded amid reports of corruption. Corporations filled the vacuum, Glaude explains, with “star-spangled whoopee cushions; patriotic toilet seats; Liberty hamburgers; red, white and blue beer cans.” The author, around 8 years old at the time, dimly remembers donning a pair of tricolor trousers.
A half-century later, Glaude is refreshingly honest about the depths of his despair. “I do not love America, and never have, especially now,” he writes in one of the more startling opening sentences I’ve read in some time. He dismisses this year’s Semiquincentennial as reaching back “to a storybook America that requires either the banishment of Black people from view or the reduction of our role in the country’s history, so as to affirm America’s ongoing quest to be a more perfect union.”
Undoubtedly true. But Trump doesn’t own the country, at least not yet, nor the 250th anniversary of one of the most radically liberatory and confusingly contradictory events in world history — an inspiration, as Glaude shows, even to critical observers of the American experiment, like Douglass. Far from the revanchist MAGA-palooza in Washington, I suspect this summer’s unasked-for invitation to national soul-searching may surprise us yet.
Despite his despair, Glaude concludes that “the past still offers resources for us to freedom-dream.” So, too, does this book.
AMERICA, U.S.A.: How Race Shadows the Nation’s Anniversaries | By Eddie S. Glaude Jr. | Crown | 270 pp. | $31
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