Augusto Rodrigues
Two days prior to Portugal’s match against Morocco in the FIFA World Cup, a colleague from Portugal in Qatar posted this cryptic note: “Keep it in between us…please…I feel 80% that Morocco will win the quarterfinals against Portugal. God…prove me wrong.”
His reply to my query was: “They are strong…Muslim support in the Muslim world (no racism)… And developing politics?”
Portugal being defeated by Morocco surprised most and left us with two questions – both with reasonable answers – in the minds of the fans of Portugal and Cristiano Ronaldo.
Ronaldo has a wide fan following, many in Portugal, and they were the ones miffed over him being benched against Switzerland first and subsequently not starting against Morocco.
And, the debate in Portugal and the rest of the football world spilt over into whether coach Fernando Santos should continue as well.
Whether coach Santos should continue, must be addressed first, because there is little to debate about whether Ronaldo should continue representing his country. His age is the answer.
Fernando Santos is lucky to have been given so much room at the top despite not translating his luck into results.
Portugal won just one title, the European, under him, despite him being at the helm of affairs for the last eight years after he took over from Paulo Bento, the coach of South Korea, the team that defeated Portugal in the Group stage.
Ronaldo was part of Santos’s team from the start and so was Pepe. Ricardo Carvalho was there and so were Nani and a few others who were part of the group picked up by Jose Mourinho to join him in Chelsea.
Santos did the right thing by not fielding Ronaldo against Switzerland and the match thereafter.
But the question is: did he do it at the right time? Wouldn’t it have been better if he had tried the formula earlier and so prepared the team for the eventualities ahead?
The questions may have come late, based on the response of the team against Switzerland, and would have sounded obnoxious had the team defeated Morocco.
The writing on the wall was clear – Portugal had to make room for the talent it has and using Ronaldo wisely was the way out.
A player, whatever his calibre on the playfield, needs time to adjust on the field with his team and his style of playing.
Therefore, the question being asked is, should Fernando have started by using Ronaldo late into the game, in the group stages, so as to give the others more time to adjust to the demands of playing on a world stage.
Those who came in place of Ronaldo, despite their performance, seemed to have been jostled too soon from the knock-out stage to the quarterfinals, instead of being allowed room to grow with the team from the group stages.
Thus, they lost the opportunity to get a better understanding of each other’s minds.
Ronaldo is gone, and it is good he is going this way, because as a player, he managed to not just build a fan following for himself, but for his clubs and country too.
Such was his persona with the ball – he managed to draw people back to the love of football, something for which he will never be forgotten.
With Ronaldo on his way out of the national team, the question is not who is next. Portugal has an incredibly talented crop to be harvested, which is generally done at the Benfica Football Club Academy, well-known for nurturing talent for many years.
Players from Portugal represent teams from all over Europe and in many parts of the world, and the number keeps increasing because Portugal has had a successful grassroots system in place for many years.
The Portuguese team that participated in Qatar was full of talent and needed one of the finest coaches to choose and mix players. Fernando Santos seems to have passed the age of being able to do so ably.
Portugal is out of the World Cup, but the organisers of the World Cup do not seem out, based on newspaper reports emerging in London.
The Daily Mail has reported that FIFA has been bombarding the organisers in Qatar with legal notices related to the organisation of the tournament and the point of contention is the decision not to sell alcohol in the stadiums.
As is known, Budweiser has a long-term deal with FIFA, and the last-minute decision not to allow the sale of alcohol in the stadiums has not gone well with Budweiser and FIFA too. Hence, the legal notices.
As the dispute is resolved, Portugal fans at home are yet to get over Portugal’s loss rather than the thought of whether Ronaldo should have been benched or not.
Most at home want both – Cristiano Ronaldo and Fernando Santos – to go home gracefully.