Cristiano Ronaldo's Struggles: Portugal's Dilemma

Cristiano Ronaldo walked out in Houston chasing ghosts as much as goals. Sixth World Cup. Forty-one years old. Captain’s armband on. Kylian Mbappe had scored twice the night before. Erling Haaland, too. Lionel Messi, inevitably, had gone one better with a hat-trick.

Ronaldo’s answer? Twenty-nine touches. One shot on target. Ninety minutes of frustration and a 0-0 draw with DR Congo that felt heavier than the scoreline suggested.

Once again, he was the story. Not because he decided it, but because the numbers now insist on it.

His goalless run in major international tournaments has stretched to 10 games. Messi, over his last 10, has nine goals. The contrast is brutal. It is also unavoidable.

A legend on the periphery

Against DR Congo, Ronaldo barely brushed the game. Only Bernardo Silva, withdrawn at half-time, had fewer touches among Portugal’s starters. For long spells he drifted on the fringes, scowling, waiting for a chance that never really came.

The heatmap is damning. His involvement was not just sparse, it was narrow. Pockets of activity on the left, often in areas where Pedro Neto and Nuno Mendes should have been the ones stretching the pitch and tormenting defenders. Instead, Portugal’s shape bent around him.

Roberto Martinez, though, refused to turn the spotlight on his captain.

"It makes no sense to get the best goalscorer in world football out in a game that you need goals," he said afterwards. For Martinez, Ronaldo’s value lies not only in finishing, but in gravity: the way he drags defenders towards him, the spaces that open for others, the aura that still clings to him.

"When you look for goals, you need to have Cristiano," he insisted.

It is a clear stance. It is also a risky one.

Are Portugal failing Ronaldo – or the other way round?

Martinez is hardly short of creative talent. Bernardo Silva, Bruno Fernandes, Neto, Vitinha, Joao Neves, Joao Cancelo, Mendes – this is a supporting cast most forwards would dream of. These are players who, at club level, thread passes, break lines and build chances for fun.

So if the coach hints the problem lies behind Ronaldo, the data needs to back him up. It only does so partially.

Across each player’s last 10 competitive international games, Ronaldo has not exactly been starved of opportunities compared with his peers. Only Harry Kane has taken fewer shots than him in that period. Ronaldo has 5.36 expected goals (xG) over those matches. Kane sits at 7.15, Mbappe at 8.76. Messi’s xG figure isn’t available, but the goals column speaks loudly enough.

Those numbers suggest Ronaldo’s chances have been of lower quality. That does raise questions about the service. Is he getting the same kind of clear openings as Mbappe or Kane? Probably not.

Team xG adds another layer. With Ronaldo on the pitch in those 10 Portugal games, they have generated a combined xG of 12.76, or 1.32 per 90 minutes. England, with Kane, are at 16.39 (1.34 per 90). France, with Mbappe, surge ahead at 21.99 (1.72 per 90).

France create more. England create more. Portugal sit a notch below.

Dig deeper still and the picture sharpens. Ronaldo’s xG from team-assisted chances during this barren spell is just 2.55. Kane’s is 3.2. Mbappe’s is a staggering 5.78.

So yes, Ronaldo is living off thinner scraps than the others. The supply line, for all its glittering names, has not consistently carved open defences for him the way France do for Mbappe. That is one side of the argument.

The other side is harsher.

When the chances come, he isn’t taking them

For all the talk of service, Fernandes, Silva and Neves can point to something more basic: they have created enough for at least some of the old Ronaldo to show up.

He has had chances. Not many, but not none. If he had tucked away even a couple more of them, the debate would not be so intense. The conversation about his place in the XI might not exist at all.

Instead, the finishing that once defined him has dulled.

His post-shot xG – a measure of the quality of the attempt after it leaves the boot – is the loudest alarm bell. Kane and Mbappe are overperforming in this area, by 2.05 and 2.25 respectively. They are scoring more than the average player would from the shots they take.

Ronaldo is at -2.8. Almost three goals below expectation.

For a career built on ruthless precision, that is a staggering drop. It is not just that the chances are harder. It is that, when they do fall, he is no longer punishing opponents in the way he once did.

Strip away the emotion and this is what remains: the most prolific goalscorer the game has known is now underperforming in the one metric that used to be his guarantee.

A fixed point in a fluid game

There is another problem, and it is tactical.

Messi, Kane, Mbappe – they all influence games in different ways. Kane drops deep, links play, sprays passes. Messi drifts into midfield, dictates tempo, strings together moves. Mbappe stretches defences, runs the channels, pulls markers into uncomfortable spaces.

Ronaldo does none of that now. That is not a criticism of his past, just a reality of his present.

He stays high. He stays central or pulls into his preferred left channel. He does not knit moves together. He does not offer versatility in his movement. He waits for the ball to come to him in the areas he still trusts.

Against DR Congo, that meant long spells where he existed almost separately from Portugal’s main patterns of play. The ball went one way, he stayed another. The team adjusted. The attack shrank.

For a coach, that is a structural issue. Martinez cannot rip up his entire creative unit to serve a single player, no matter how decorated. Yet he also refuses to remove that player because of the intangible weight he believes Ronaldo still carries.

The result is a compromise that suits nobody fully.

The cost of loyalty

This is where the conversation turns from numbers to courage.

Portugal are living through what many would call a golden generation. The talent is deep, modern, suited to high-tempo, fluid football. They have the tools to go toe-to-toe with anyone.

But they are also tethered to a legend whose name still dominates team sheets, headlines and tactical discussions. Every selection is a statement. Every substitution, or lack of one, is a verdict.

If Martinez continues to build around Ronaldo, he is effectively accepting the trade-off: a less flexible attack in exchange for experience, presence and the hope that, one more time, the old instincts will resurface.

If he does not, he must be the man who phases out the most iconic player in Portugal’s history on the biggest stage of all.

Right now, he is trying to walk the line. The numbers, the performances, and the mood around this team suggest that line is getting thinner with every goalless game.

At some point, Portugal must decide which they value more: the memory of what Ronaldo was, or the full expression of what this team could be without him at its centre.