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It ended with a goal from a tall, slightly ungainly figure driving through the centre-forward position – but perhaps not the one that the narrative demanded. In stoppage time, Mikel Merino ran on to Ferran Torres’s through-ball and, with impressive calm after a scrappy game that had largely lacked it, rolled the winner past Diogo Costa. He celebrated, as he had after his winner against Germany at the Euros two years ago, with a run around the corner flag, echoing his father’s celebration after scoring for Osasuna in Stuttgart in 1991.
At the other end, an actual centre-forward slumped. For Cristiano Ronaldo, this was the end. As the final whistle blew, he stood staring bleakly into the middle distance, mortality having caught up with him at last. He is the only player ever to score in six different World Cups, but he will not score in another one. At 41, the tournament is finally all over for a player whose longevity has been a marvel.
Yet in truth, Ronaldo’s end has been coming for at least four years, since the last-16 tie at the Qatar World Cup when he was left out against Switzerland and his replacement Gonçalo Ramos scored a hat-trick in a 6-1 win. To say he bowed out not with a bang but with a whimper would be unfair, but only because in truth it wasn’t even that. This was the most impotent of farewells – and there is a sadness in that. Ronaldo’s ego really shouldn’t have been allowed to taint his legacy in the way that it has. He has been a great player, and shouldn’t be remembered as this albatross who has held back what could be a brilliant Portuguese midfield.
Spain may have gone through to the quarter-finals, but this was about Ronaldo. Even when he does nothing – these days, especially when he does nothing – it’s always about Ronaldo. His press-conference performance on Sunday was remarkable. There were jibes, there were jokes, there was a poignant sense of an athlete reluctantly accepting that he is coming to the end of the road, and also, at times, an extraordinary level of self-pity.
The comparison is obvious, too simple and, to a degree, invidious, but it’s also true. As Lionel Messi has aged, as his body has begun to fail him, he has become smarter, rationing his running, taking up unusual positions, drifting around the pitch like a sprite, uninvolved until the moment he suddenly is involved. Ronaldo, though, remains largely central in his lumberings; he is not usefully or effectively peripheral. He demands the ball constantly. Team-mates seem to feel compelled to pass to him. Occasionally he drifts wide or deep, but that just makes things worse. The nadir came with a break towards the end of the second half, stifled when Ronaldo, without the pace or energy to drive on, had to check back and deliver a pass to his right-back.
There were the familiar posturings: baffling slow stepovers that only serve to remind how good he used to be, shrugs and pleas to teammates and the officials, grimaces and gurning at the spectacular unfairness of the world, a couple of hopeful shots. There’s also the odd phenomenon of the Ronaldo ultras, who booed Lamine Yamal and roared in fury every time their hero went down and looked plaintively at the referee, which was quite a lot. Late in his career, Ronaldo has come increasingly to resemble the kid whose ball it is who has to be indulged.
Leaving Ronaldo aside, if that’s not too implausible a concept in a World Cup that has given itself wholeheartedly to the cult of celebrity, this was a battle of two highly gifted midfields and, for the most part, Spain had the better of it. There is a real sense of that Spanish unit clicking, with Rodri, slowly, starting to look again like the player he was in the Euros, before his ACL injury. There are times when he bosses a situation with the dismissive calm of a parent playing in a children’s game.
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Nuno Mendes had a fine game, not for the first time shutting down Lamine Yamal. He even hit the bar with a deflected shot just before half-time. But when he overstretched in blocking a Lamine Yamal shot and had to go off, the Barcelona teenager began to exert a greater influence. Still, though, the worry from the group stage, mitigated to an extent against Austria in the last 32, lingered: this is not a Spain with the cutting edge of the Euros two years ago. Lamine Yamal, perhaps because of his injury, has been less effective in this tournament than he was then, and none of the players who have operated on the left have offered the same threat as Nico Williams did.
But Spain had enough, and so it is they who will go on to face the United States or Belgium in Los Angeles on Friday. Ronaldo, meanwhile, intrusively pursued by a TV camera, trudged down the tunnel into the darkness. To rage against the dying of the light is natural, can be admirable, but this was a farewell so limp as to feel almost tawdry.
