We had a record number of players of advanced age at this World Cup; and while a couple of these - Messi (turned 39 during the tournament) and Cabo Verde's outstanding keeper, Vozinha (40) - proved that some players can still function at at an exceptional level into the end of their 30s, and maybe even a little bit beyond,... Cristiano Ronaldo, alas, was not one of them.
Cristiano's game has always relied heavily on his exceptional physique - his pace, power, and stamina. Now that those have faded so dramatically, he is a pathetic shadow of his former self. Roberto Martinez's craven persistence with Cristiano as a starter for Portugal effectively left the team with 10 men, as he was nothing more than a passenger. He would simply loiter around the edge of the attacking third, waiting for his team to gain possession and run beyond him, then saunter up towards the penalty area, hoping that a wide attacking player would be able to hold the ball up long enough for him to catch up with play, and would be able to find him with a precise cross or a cutback. Cristiano still knows the optimum positions to take up, and still has the slick finishing skills to put chances emphatically away when they do fall to him. But he's become so slow-moving that it is just about impossible for him to find those spaces any more, or for his teammates to find him in them, if he does; essentially, because he no longer has the weapon of speed, he needs defenders to forget about him, so that he can move into a dangerous position and remain unmarked. Only the very bad defenders of Uzbekistan allowed this to happen; he barely got a kick in any of Portugal's other games. (Messi often played almost as slowly, and covered remarkably little ground; but his game has always been based more on guile and on an uncanny awareness of, and anticipation of, the evolution of space around him; those skills seem to have become even sharper with age.)
It was a sad way for him to end such a storied career - tarnishing his reputation, allowing himself to be mocked and vilifed for his hubris in continuing to insist on an international career when his body obviously just wasn't up to it any more. He really should have retired gracefully from the Portugal national team four or five years ago.
Now, there a lot of things to dislike about Cristiano himself - his obvious narcisissism, his often frankly creepy public persona, and his outstaying his welcome in international football to the obvious detriment of his country's chances in this tournament - but I'm sure what has most alienated the majority of football lovers from him in the last decade or so is the insane, toxic fanbase that has grown up around him in the social media era. It really has become A CULT. And its two main articles of faith are that Cristiano is better than Messi (laughable in itself, but... it gets worse), and, further, that Cristiano is in fact the Greatest Of All-Time (where do I start?).
Now, I've said a number of times that I regard this whole 'G.O.A.T.' question as pretty fatuous: there have been many outstanding players in this lovely game of ours over the years, and it's impossible to rank them against each other in any meaningful or decisive way. How can you really compare players who played in very different eras of the game, or who played in different positions (how do you compare a superb goalkeeper against a top centre-forward??), or who had very different playing styles in what was nominally the same position (how can you compare Kylian Mbappé to Gareth Bale or Zinedine Zidane??)? It just can't be done, it's pointless to even try.
However,.... since the Cristiano idolaters force our hand on this, so often, so relentlessly, so vociferously, I will offer this analysis.
Cristiano is a superb athlete and an exceptional goalscorer. And yes, in his younger days, he operated on the wing too; so there has been some versatility in his play, and he certainly has some astounding close ball-control skills, as well as top-class finishing. But Mbappé is even quicker and an even better dribbler, and has eclipsed his impact on the international stage in only a decade (with maybe a decade or at least another 4 or 5 years of top-flight football still in him); Kane is a much more versatile player, able to drop into midfield and open up play with a superb range of passing; Benzema and Lewandoski are at least as good as him in their finishing. So... even amongst the leading goalscorers of his own day, I don't see Cristiano as being clearly the No. 1.
And for Portugal, well, it takes some cojones to suggest that Cristiano is better than Eusebio, who was a dominant force in European and world football in the 1960s, and whose name is still spoken reverently even by people who never saw him play. Oh, the cult members have probably never heard of Eusebio! But they ought to have heard, surely, of Rui Costa and Luis Figo, giants of the Portuguese side within the last 30 years. And there were others of that sort of period, a 'golden generation' for the Portuguese, who ought to get some consideration too: Fernando Couto, Sérgio Conceição, and a little later, Beto. And in the current team, of course, the marvellous Bruno Fernandes. All of these are arguably better players than Cristiano, just for the greater range of impact they are able to have for the team, the greater range of skills and creative vision they are able to demonstrate. (It is, for me, very difficult to accommodate mere goalscorers amongst the very highest ranks of the world's greatest players; I venerate players who have a wider impact on shaping the game around them.) So, again, even among great Portuguese players, Cristiano is not obviously No. 1 - and probably not even really among the Top 5.
Then, if you delve back further into history, and focus just on the other great forwards, is Cristiano clearly better than Gabriel Bastituta, Ronaldo (the 'proper' one, the great Brazilian forward of the late '90s and early '00s), Marco van Basten, Patrick Kluivert, Dennis Bergkamp, Thierry Henry, Christian Vieri, Didier Drogba, Jurgen Klinsmann, Karl-Heinz Rummenigge, Hristo Stoichkov, Bebeto, Romario, Hans Krankl, Paolo Rossi, Leopoldo Luque, Allan Simonsen, Johnny Rep, Gerd Muller, Just Fontaine, Sándor Kocsis, Alfredo di Stefano?? I don't think so. I'm really not sure he's any better than any of these; he's certainly not better than all of them.
But, as I said, the great creative players are always going to dominate these conversations for me: the likes of Ferenc Puskás (there's a reason the 'outrageous goals' award is named after him!), or Denis Law and George Best from the great Manchester United team of the late '60s, or Cruyff and Neeskens from the beautiful Dutch side of the 1970s, Michel Platini, Ruud Gullit, Lothar Matthäus, Gheorghe Hagi, Robert Prosinečki, Bernd Schuster, Roberto Baggio, Gianfranco Zola, Zvonimir Boban, Pavel Nedved, Francesco Totti, Andrea Pirlo, Luka Modrić, David Silva, Kevin DeBruyne. And of course from England we have many top contenders too, such as Bobby Charlton, Kevin Keegan, Bryan Robson, Glenn Hoddle, Trevor Francis, Paul Gascoigne, Darren Anderton, David Beckham, Michael Owen, Paul Scholes, Steven Gerrard, and now, Jude Bellingham. Indeed, there are an extraordinary number of wonderful English players who somehow never got a proper chance with the national side: Frank Worthington, Eric Gates, Brian Little, Vince Hilaire, Matt Le Tissier, and many, many others.
And that's without getting into all the wonderful defenders and goalkeepers from the annals of the game.
But really, there are only three players who are head-and-shoulders above the rest, who credibly have some claim to being recognised as the Greatest of All-Time.
They are, of course, Pelé, Maradona, and Messi. For me, Maradona is disqualified by his obnoxious personality. His athleticism, his ball-control, and his goalscoring ability were indeed super-human, probably better than Messi's and at least close to Pelé's; but, unfortunately, he was also a drug-fiend, a psycho, a thug, and a cheat. While he was generally acknowledged as the greatest player in the world throughout the 1980s, and on into the beginning of the 1990s, he also managed to be the world's least liked player (when the Spanish hard-man defender Andoni Goikoetxea broke his ankle with a hideous, and probably entirely deliberate, challenge from behind in 1983, he was widely cheered - or at least forgiven - by most of the football-watching world). Even worse, while Pelé and Messi were both able to communicate their devotion to the game with a joyful passion which made them uplifting to watch, Maradona always seemed to play with a scowl on his face, emanating a bitter anger - as if football were his revenge on an unfair world.
So, I feel that there can only be one answer to this question: it's Pelé. Messi might have come very, very close. Maradona might have come very, very, very close; but nobody wants to emulate, or even remember him. It's always going to be Pelé.
So, if you really want to have a proper in-depth discussion about who might be the greatest football player of all time,... I'm sorry, Cristiano Ronaldo is just not in that conversation, not even close: not even potentially on the fringes of the Top 5 or the Top 10 or the Top 20. For me, I really don't think he'd make it into the Top 50!!
And part of the reason, I have to say, is that he comes across as a bit of a dick. Leo Messi always seems deeply integrated into every team that he's played in. One of the reasons Argentina have so over-performed with him during the last decade or so is that the rest of the squad clearly love him to pieces and would absolutely lay down their lives for him on the field. Particularly in these latter years, and particularly with Portugal, Cristiano's relationship with his teammates has always seemed cooler, more distant, more awkward; but really, throughout his entire career, I can't recall teammates ever talking about him with the kind of spontaneous warmth and admiration that you find when players discuss playing alongside Messi or DeBruyne or Henry or.... any of the greats. When teammates talk of Cristiano, you see admiration for his ability, gratitude for what he can bring to the team - but no warmth, no intimacy; profound respect, but no love.
He comes across a raging egomaniac who is excessively preoccupied with his public image - or rather, with his appearance - and with chasing records. And one can't help thinking that this passionate fanbase he has acquired are mostly drawn by that larger-than-life persona rather than his footballing skills per se. They seem to be besotted with his chiselled 'good looks' (although many of us find something rather offputtingly un-human, 'Uncanny Valley'-like about his weirdly adrogynous features) and his gym-toned bod; for many, there seems to be more homo-erotic fetishization than football appreciation going on behind their idolatry.
As he has extended his career beyond all reasonable limits, purely, it seems, to try to chase even more meaningless 'lifetime achievement' records', I fear there is a danger that this public persona may degenerate into self-parody, and that in a few years' time he will be remembered more for shilling personal grooming products than for his performances on the pitch.
I hope that doesn't happen to him. But he does seem likely to bring it on himself. It would be a great pity if... he were to limp on for several more years, continuing to take the tainted Saudi money to play in that ridiculous exhibition league, and forcing himself on the unfortunate Portugal team for another Euros or another World Cup, thereby making himself a complete laughing-stock. He undoubtedly used to be a truly great player, one of the greatest... maybe among the top 100 or so ever to play the game.
But Cristiano Ronaldo has stuck around far too long already. He should hang up his boots now.
