Nothing, perhaps, is quite so difficult for an elite sportsman as timing their exit. It’s not easy for any person in any job to weigh the hope of having more to give with the desire not to linger beyond their usefulness, but it’s perhaps particularly hard for top athletes because unrealistic self-confidence is so essential to their success. It takes an almost unhealthy level of self-belief for anybody to make the sacrifices to get to the top, to dedicate themselves to such a precarious vocation, to overcome all the setbacks and injuries and failures.
How can someone whose whole life has been spent assuring themselves there are no odds they cannot overcome accept that that is it, that the time has come to say goodbye? The news that Cristiano Ronaldo has retired from international football brings with it, inevitably, a sadness. Sadness that we will no longer see him skipping past a defender, or burying a neck-thrusting header, and sadness in that the end of the career of any great is a reminder of mortality; all things in time must pass.
But there is also a sadness that he timed his departure so badly. For at least three tournaments, there has been a sense of Ronaldo holding Portugal back. At the 2022 World Cup, Fernando Santos belatedly took the decision to leave Ronaldo out for the last-16 tie against Switzerland.
Portugal suddenly had a fluency and fluidity they had lacked for years and the player who had replaced Ronaldo, Gonçalo Ramos, scored a hat-trick . That seemed incontrovertible evidence that the end was upon Ronaldo, or at least that his role might become that of an impact substitute. But even in the final minutes of that game, half the crowd were chanting for Ronaldo.
Some, perhaps, were Portuguese fans but many were tourists. They didn’t care much about the result or who went through, they just wanted to see the famous man do the famous thing. Near the end, Ronaldo scored a goal that was obviously offside.
He knew it was offside, but he also knew what his public wanted. So he did the “Siuuuu …” celebration and was rewarded with the biggest cheer of the night. This was like seeing late-period Elvis in Las Vegas: it didn’t matter he was no longer the singer he had been, he was still Elvis.
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