“Cristiano Ronaldo is just another player here to help us. He’s like everyone else.”
The sort of remark that would pass unnoticed almost anywhere. Yet it was enough to unleash a remarkable backlash against João Neves, the 21-year-old PSG midfielder, fresh from back-to-back Champions League triumphs and the scorer of Portugal’s opener against DR Congo. Within hours, Neves found himself facing more than 150,000 comments on Instagram from Ronaldo supporters around the world. Outrage in every language, every alphabet. His offence was simple enough: calling Cristiano Ronaldo “a player like any other”.
Little attention was paid to the part of the interview in which Neves acknowledged that everyone understands “what Cristiano has given to the national team and to football”. The comments ranged from “show some respect to Cristiano” to “Cristiano’s boots are more important than you”, alongside an endless stream of GIFs featuring the Portuguese icon. A form of digital territory-marking. A similar fate awaited Bruno Fernandes. More than 85,000 comments flooded his profile. Here the criticism became more specific. “Pass the ball to Cristiano” was the recurring refrain.
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Against Congo, Ronaldo was almost invisible: no shots on target, no successful dribbles, no key passes. The reaction arrived elsewhere. On teammates accused of not doing enough for him. Neves in front of the cameras. Bruno Fernandes on the pitch. At what is expected to be his final World Cup with Portugal, the scale of Ronaldo’s presence is becoming harder to ignore. Critics — among them The Guardian and The Athletic, which described him respectively as a “dead weight” and a “shadow of the great player he once was” — continue to question his usefulness on the field. Portugal coach Roberto Martínez remains unequivocal.
“It would be absurd to take off the greatest player of all time in a game where we cannot score.”
Cristiano is not up for discussion. As long as he is there, he plays. It recalls the last European Championship. The iconic No. 7 finished the tournament without a goal and with a single assist, recorded in the 3–0 win over Turkey. Even then, many observers pointed to the physical limitations of a player long removed from his peak, yet still preferred to Gonçalo Ramos because of the weight carried by his name.
The tournament gradually became something close to a Ronaldo show. Its most theatrical moment arrived with the tears that followed his missed penalty against Slovenia.
Meanwhile, Portugal risks wasting its own golden generation. Bruno Fernandes. João Neves. Vitinha. Players increasingly measured not by what they produce, nor by their contribution to the wider objective, but by something else entirely: whether they can help Cristiano Ronaldo score.