Hungary vs Portugal: Why Cristiano Ronaldo's Euro 2016 must come to life

Lost magic: Cristiano Ronaldo
(FRANCISCO LEONG/AFP/Getty Images)
Dan Jones22 June 2016

Hands on hips, his mouth curled into an ironic faux-smile, his eyes trained meaningfully on someone less gifted than himself; it is not hard to tell when Cristiano Ronaldo has a cob on. And at the competition he quaintly calls ‘Euro Cup’ (Euro 2016 to most of us) Ronaldo has been cobbing like a good ’un. The world and its footballs are not doing his bidding and he is visibly displeased.

Portugal play Hungary tomorrow, needing a win to be certain of playing in the knockout stages of the competition, where they could meet England. If Ronaldo’s fortune does not change, it is possible that this will be his last match of the tournament. His last match of any Euro Cup? It isn’t that far-fetched.

The tale of Ronaldo’s Euro 2016 tape has been played ceaselessly since his last match, against Austria, in which he missed a penalty, had an offside goal disallowed and continued his to demonstrate his signature move of the tournament: pelting the ball into the trunks of defenders ranked before him.

It does not improve with repeated viewing. It is a story of frustration leaking into disbelief: of a magician shouting abracadabra and finding that nothing happens, that his wand is merely a black and white stick.

By pretty much any metric you want to reach for, Ronaldo is an all-time great footballer, a beautiful, freakish collision of supreme genetics and singular bloody-mindedness, who has willed himself to superstardom and deserves everything he has achieved.

He thrives on expectation, feeds on pressure and is one of the most competitive sportsmen in the world. If he sometimes seems absurd, petulant, vain or even mad — well, this is the price of his excellence.

Yet Ronaldo is also 31 years old and although he is still built like a light-heavyweight boxer he is two years into a physical decline that has already forced him to radically alter his style of play and his position on the field.

Euro 2016: Day Nine In Pictures

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He has turned himself from a surging wide forward into a ridiculously prolific but much more conventional No9. An opportunist rather than an inventor. A lightning bolt rather than a tornado. There is no shame in this. Quite the opposite, in fact, for it takes a clear-eyed, mature and talented sportsman first to notice and accept that he needs to become something else and then to go out and do it. The 51 goals Ronaldo scored this season for Real Madrid (and, of course, the final penalty in the Champions League Final) bear out the effectiveness of his second coming.

Nevertheless, it has not happened for him in two matches of Portugal’s guaranteed three at this tournament and right now that is all that matters. Iceland would not roll over for him and nor would Austria.

Hungary are of much the same standard and if Ronaldo cannot crack the likes of Richard Guzmics and Adam Lang then he will not worry the assorted centre-backs of Spain, France, Germany, Belgium, Italy or even England should he run into them later in the tournament.

Presumably none of this is lost for a moment on the player himself. Alongside Sweden’s Zlatan Ibrahimovic, Ronaldo is the grand old man of Euro 2016 and the continent expects him to entertain.

No doubt he has noticed that in the Copa America, his rival and nemesis Lionel Messi has scored four goals for Argentina, who are in the semi-finals and cruising. Failure for Ronaldo looks especially ugly when placed in the harsh light of Messi’s success. It would be hard to provide the Portuguese captain with a much stronger incentive to up his game.

For the sake of both Ronaldo himself and Euro 2016 as an event, I hope that tomorrow night his tournament comes to life. None of us gain anything other than cheap schadenfreude from watching him stutter and sulk through games that he ought to be bossing.

A puffed up, world-beating Ronaldo is often a picture of arrogance and self-worship but he has usually earned the public displays of onanism. An irritated Ronaldo is merely irritating: a sulking superhero sore because his cape has torn. It is unedifying and rather sad. So come in, please, Cristiano Ronaldo. Your Euro Cup is waiting for you.

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