kel 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁥󠁮󠁧󠁿

God keeps me in the game

[kel 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁥󠁮󠁧󠁿 @max_kelz]

Motion

[LIMOBLAZE OMO JESU @Limoblaze]

The insecurity of that guy’s fanbase, people that said debate was over in 2022, Dey do hate watch in 2026 😂

[德亚 🖤 @elonhatesder4]

“if you think Ronaldo is the goat, then you are mentally unstable” why you come de force your goat on me?

You wan make mad person join your fanbase? 😂

[LIMOBLAZE OMO JESU @Limoblaze]

Once again, another twisting of facts.

He didn’t say the World Cup was unimportant, he said; how can you define a player’s career by a tournament that lasts 6-7 games, which is a very factual and sensible statement.

[Ororo😎 @McFlybowy]

Seeing how everyone is twisting this around like they suddenly lack basic comprehension, at this point it’s obvious it’s just hatred for Cristiano Ronaldo. Nothing he said here is disrespectful to the World Cup or to anyone who has won it.

He’s simply saying that, for him personally, winning Euro 2016 means as much as winning a World Cup because of what it represented. Portugal had never won a major international trophy before. He carried the weight of a nation for years, and that triumph changed the history of Portuguese football forever.

He’s talking about the emotional value of that achievement, not claiming the Euros are a bigger or more prestigious tournament than the World Cup.

But because it’s Ronaldo, people deliberately strip away the context just to create outrage. If any other footballer had said the exact same thing, everyone would call it passion and sentiment. Ronaldo says it, and suddenly people pretend they can’t understand plain English.

At some point, just admit you don’t like the man instead of forcing fake narratives every time he opens his mouth.

[LIMOBLAZE OMO JESU @Limoblaze]

This is the summary of the hate he gets; nobody accounts to the fact that English is not his first language & that these media pages do a lot of subtle twisting of his words to push this narrative they’ve pushed for years. He said; I will hold my head high because I know I gave it my best till the very end & tbh the best trophy he won was his first international trophy in 2016 because in context of coming from nothing and no footballing history as a nation, that was such a big deal and to him it carries the same feeling as a World Cup.
Is he confident and cocky? Yes! And he has the accolades to talk his talk cos He was walked the walk.

[The Big Bird🦅⚽️ @c_mobike]

THE KING WHO REFUSED TO KNEEL !!

[aa9skillz @aa9skillz]

Quaresma just told Ruben Dias upfront in his face how all of us Portuguese people feel about this teams performance this whole World Cup…

[IM🇵🇹 @Iconic_Mourinho]

My take on this whole Portugal generation:

It's all about timing in these things. Getting the right set of players, with the right star, managed by the right coach, at the right context. But things never truly aligned for us.

Ronaldo was sandwiched between 2 great generations. When he was too young to be the best, the team was great. When he was too old to do a carry job, the team was great. When he was in his prime, for over a decade, the team was mediocre.

We always believed we could win big tournaments because of Ronaldo, but it was sort of a blind hope. A team whose second most influential player is a Nani, a João Moutinho, or a Pepe at times, can't be a favorite to win a World Cup, or even a Euros. Ronaldo was playing at such a level, touching unprecedented levels of dominance in the Champions League, that it made us believe we could always win. But, again, it was blind hope. From 2008 until 2018, the rest of our squad didn't have enough talent or spark to be the favorites to win anything.

But the blind hope has a reason to it. A solid team who has the best player in the world has a better chance of winning than every very good team whose best player is not quite the best in the world. And that's what worries me about our next generation.

Most World Cup wins have been about a story that feels right, led by a historic player (Messi, Mbappe, Pele, Maradona, Ronaldo Nazario, Zidane…). Portugal had 6 attempts at writing that story, and we fumbled all of them, for different reasons. Sometimes we went with the wrong coach (2010, 2022, 2026), sometimes the team wasn't good enough (2014, 2018).

So now what for us?

When a team wins the World Cup without having a true star, it's always out of such collective superiority that the run just makes sense (Germany, Spain, Italy the most recent examples).

Still, these were stacked squads. Will we have a stacked squad in 2030? 2034? 2038? We can never be sure. Belgium doesn't seem like having another golden generation anytime soon, neither does Italy, neither does the Netherlands, even Germany's future looks uncertain… international football is unpredictable.

For this post-Ronaldo chapter, the coach will probably be Jorge Jesus (since Mourinho took the Madrid job). No stars, no media, no hype. Just a team trying to play good football. I'm more curious than excited. But I think we will keep on having some good moments. Our era as favorites is over, and we begin another era as dark horses.

Conclusion, on Ronaldo's era with Portugal:
It didn't feel like a bust, it didn't feel like a fumble. Sometimes it felt like we underachieved, but we had some really great moments. We are still without a World Cup, but we saw our country win thinhs for the first time ever, and the culture in Portuguese football was changed forever. 2016 was more than just a trophy, it was a statement of change.

We could have won a World Cup, in the end we didn't… maybe some day. Regardless, we saw history be made.

At least we can tell our grandchildren we witnessed this era.

[Fabrizio Romano @FabrizioRomano]

🚨🚨 OFFICIAL: PORTUGAL ARE OUT OF THE 2026 WORLD CUP. ❌🇵🇹

[PANDEV🧘‍♂️⚽️ @Cyberjoe19]

Me to anything that has to do with Portugal henceforth

[kel 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁥󠁮󠁧󠁿 @max_kelz]

@whereisdrey ??

[Mr Royale @BayoRoyale]

I promise you, it’s a coaching issue

[kel 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁥󠁮󠁧󠁿 @max_kelz]

Martinez is so not that guy

[kel 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁥󠁮󠁧󠁿 @max_kelz]

mendes out ke omo nothing for portugal

[kel 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁥󠁮󠁧󠁿 @max_kelz]

El bicho saudação 🫡. I'm not prepared to see you cry.

[Portugal @selecaoportugal]

CR7. ✨

#VaiDarPortugal | #FIFAWorldCup

[kel 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁥󠁮󠁧󠁿 @max_kelz]

Martinez mehn you really no wan learn.

[Rance @son_of_uki]

he's truly not the player he was... the cristiano ronaldo we know would have looked straight into your eyes and tell you he'd score!
what a time, what an era ❤️

[Tansu Yegen @TansuYegen]

Norway knocked out Brazil, then the army posted a Viking celebration video.

[(fan) Alex⁸ @UTDAlex8]

🚨Cristiano Ronaldo on calling himself the best player of all time:

🗣️Reporter:
“People say you always call yourself the best player. Why not let your fans say that instead?”

🗣️Cristiano Ronaldo:

“If you don’t believe you’re the best, you’ll never achieve everything you’re capable of. I’ve always believed in myself, and I’m not afraid to say it.

I don’t mind people hating me because it pushes me to work even harder. We cannot live obsessed with what other people think about us. It’s impossible to live like that. Not even God managed to please the entire world.”

[Orezi Mena @Thecreativemena]

Fluent and coherent. God please