When Roberto Martinez sat down with the Portugal Football Federation prior to taking the job as manager, one wonders if they inserted a Cristiano Ronaldo clause into his contract.
A clause that requires the manager, whoever that may be, to start Ronaldo and keep him on the park until he requests otherwise or is severely injured.
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Same goes for the players.
Back yourself to take a free kick on the outskirts of the 18-yard box?
Well, you better jog on and hand that ball over to the 39-year-old.
It goes without saying Ronaldo is one of the greatest players to ever play the game and deserves every record and accolade he has collected.
But in Portugal’s Round of 16 clash against Slovenia, we were treated to the ugly side of Ronaldo’s cult of personality.
It peaked on the brink of half time in extra time when Portugal were awarded a penalty.
With the score 0-0, it was tailor-made for Ronaldo to seize the moment.
And, having slotted his last 13 penalties, you’d have expected the back of the net to bulge and a stream of 10 red shirts streaking away to celebrate.
Instead, Slovenian goalkeeper Jan Oblak produced a superb stop to deny Ronaldo, prompting the superstar to burst into a flood of tears at the break in extra time.
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The Portuguese fans chanted his name. Diogo Dalot gave him a kiss and cuddle. Other teammates rallied around him.
Ronaldo eventually atoned for his mistake in the penalty shootout as he bravely stepped up to take Portugal’s first and slotted it past a diving Oblak.
But one may argue a shootout wouldn’t have been required if Ronaldo wasn’t on the park.
Portugal won plenty of free kicks around the edge of the box and unsurprisingly, Ronaldo stepped up to take every one of them.
Not one troubled Oblak.
In fact, Ronaldo has taken 61 direct free kicks at international tournaments and scored just once.
Fouling a Portuguese player around the 18-yard box has become the equivalent of basketball’s tactic of hacking a player who is dreadful at free throws given Ronaldo’s inability to score from free kicks.
His penalty miss also meant Ronaldo’s wait for a goal at Euro 2024 remains.
It’s not for a lack of trying, either.
Ronaldo has taken 20 shots, the most out of any player at the tournament, but still cannot find the back of the net.
The 39-year-old’s incessant need for a goal to provide some sort of gratification was blasted by ESPN’s Mark Ogden.
“The Ronaldo show is becoming ridiculous now,” Ogden wrote on X.
“Great player, one of the absolute best ever, but this is not an U-10 game where the greedy kid gets to take all the free-kicks and miss all the chances.”
You also get the sense a younger Ronaldo would not have skewed the chances the 39-year-old version did against Slovenia.
“There was an array of poor touches that led to possession being lost and, perhaps most striking of all, a series of crosses that he narrowly failed to get on the end of,” The Guardian’s Jonathan Wilson wrote.
“The sprint is no longer quite there, the synapses not quite so sharp, the reflexes slightly lacking. Chances he would once have buried now go to waste.”
One must also wonder what goes through the minds of Pedro Neto or Goncalo Ramos, two dynamic attacking options who could have influenced the game but remained unused substitutes while Ronaldo played every minute.
As physically fit as Ronaldo may be, he is not a relentless presser of opposition defenders when they have the ball.
With every minute that ticked over, it became “obvious” to The Telegraph’s Sam Wallace that Ronaldo “was a prime candidate to be substituted”, yet he remained on the park.
“It was a very odd state of affairs,” Wallace added.
It’s impossible to say whether Neto or Ramos, to name just two, would have won Portugal the game.
But they’d have injected plenty of energy and running into the team, something Ronaldo was not able to do.
Wilson pondered “whether Portugal’s hordes of gifted attacking players mind being bit-part players in the Ronaldo show”.
“And you wonder as well about the wisdom of taking an immensely talented squad to the World Cup and this European Championship and then treating them as essentially a farewell tour,” Wilson wrote.
“Opportunities to win tournaments, real opportunities, come very rarely; to sacrifice them before the ego of a fading star, no matter how great he once was, seems indefensible.”
Ronaldo has since stated this will be his last European Championship.
Had he made it to the 2028 edition of the tournament, he’d be 43 years old.
But even now, Ronaldo’s desire to start for Portugal appears more harmful than helpful for the team, especially as the tournament gets tougher.