Portugal finally got the job done in Toronto: they teed up Cristiano Ronaldo for his first-ever goal in the World Cup knockout round.
As a pleasant aside, they also secured a place the last 16 with a thrilling, dramatic, controversial victory over Croatia in Toronto, setting up a mouth-watering meeting with Spain in Dallas.
For Roberto Martinez, it is harder than it should be to identify which task he’ll be most pleased about ticking off.
The Portugal boss finally grew a pair and substituted Ronaldo – but only after the 41-year-old had dodged the hook when Martinez made a quadruple substitution with Croatia leading on 63 minutes.
Even Ronaldo knew he was ripe for being replaced after a woefully ineffective hour. Only just prior had he managed his first touch in the Croatia box, his second putting the ball beyond Dominik Livakovic into the net, the offside flag rendering each invalid.
Up to that point, Ronaldo seemed oddly unsure of himself. Getting no more joy out Croatia’s centre-backs than he took from Colombia’s, the centre-forward began dropping deep to receive.
Of course, when Ronaldo shows for the ball, Portugal pass it to him. But he looked a lost soul in the build up. Each time he bounced possession backwards, even on the occasions he could turn, possibly into the shooting positions a cocksure CR7 doesn’t pass up.
In one instance, he drifted to the left flank, where Rafael Leao was Portugal’s biggest threat in the first half and took the ball from the AC Milan forward, standing on it to slow play almost to a halt, much to the bemusement of Leao and everyone else.
Martinez’s mercy, however, kept Ronaldo on the pitch long enough to be on the spot when Portugal were awarded a penalty midway through the second half. That became his first valid touch in the Croatia box, and his first goal with his 30th shot in the knockout stages of a World Cup.
With that duck broken, Martinez finally felt brave enough to pull Ronaldo in the 81st minute, much to the player’s irritation. Ronaldo seemed as sheepish as he could be when he thought his was one of four numbers going up. Buoyed by his penalty, he appeared affronted when Martinez made the right call.
Now the Portugal boss has another to make. Does Ronaldo automatically start against Spain?
We probably all know the answer, though Goncalo Ramos’s 93rd-minute winning goal, getting on the end of the kind of cross from Leao that Ronaldo wasn’t, gives Martinez more of a dilemma than he might be comfortable with.
Should Ramos’s header have been the winner? The officials think so. But very few others would agree conclusively that Igor Mantanovic did indeed get a follicle on a 104th minute cross so as to make Mario Pasalic offside before Josko Gvardiol bundled beyond Diogo Costa to score what would have been a deserved equaliser.
Mantanovic helped change the flow of the game when he replaced Ante Budimir at the break. Budimir did little wrong; but the physical presence of Freiburg’s Mantanovic allowed Croatia to make more of crosses, especially from the excellent Ivan Perisic, who once again came alive in a major tournament. When Portugal deployed men wide, Luka Modric and Mateo Kovacic thrived through the middle.
Kovacic was kept out twice by Costa, brilliantly on the second occasion. While Modric was certainly the most effective of the 40-somethings on show, even if Ronaldo was given the Man of the Match award because, FIFA.
This had to be the end for one of Modric or Ronaldo at the World Cup, certainly if Ronaldo’s sister is to be believed. It will be the Croatia star who bows out in Toronto, arguably as the greater World Cup icon, with Golden and Bronze Balls from the last two tournaments.
Ronaldo, though, has at least one more ‘last dance’, assuming Martinez isn’t feeling empowered to do the right thing before facing Spain’s record-breaking defence.
