Ryan Forde

🚨 Diogo Dalot on the reaction to Cristiano Ronaldo leaving the Portugal camp: “I remember years ago, one of the younger players came into the national team and kept staring at Cristiano during breakfast. Cristiano noticed. He said, ‘What are you looking at?’ The boy said, ‘Nothing.’ Cristiano said, ‘Good. Eat your breakfast’ and then he smiles. Later he told me, ‘Diogo, I used to choose Portugal because of him on FIFA. Now he’s asking me to pass the bread.’ That’s Cristiano’s problem now. He’s been here so long that Portugal has forgotten how strange his story actually is. There are players in this squad who were babies when he first played for Portugal. Some grew up watching him and eventually became his teammates. So when people reduce this week to, ‘He’s 41. He was benched. His ego couldn’t accept it,’ I think we’re being too quick. Especially when the manager himself told us Cristiano had said: play me, bench me, put me in the stands…..I’ll accept it. Then something happens. The federation president gets involved. Cristiano leaves and says, ‘One day I’ll explain the truth.’ Maybe we should allow him that day before deciding what the truth is. People will say, ‘Nobody is bigger than Portugal.’ Of course. But Portugal being bigger than Cristiano doesn’t require us to pretend Cristiano was small for Portugal. I once asked him how he still found motivation for international games after everything he’d achieved. He looked at the badge and said, ‘Because this one doesn’t belong to me.’ I never forgot that. The goals belong to him. The records belong to him. Portugal doesn’t. That’s why he kept coming back. If this really is the end, I hope Portugal is careful about how it says goodbye. Because one day another young player will walk into this camp and ask what Cristiano Ronaldo was really like. I’d rather tell him how much he gave Portugal than explain why, after more than twenty years, everybody spent his final night arguing about whether he should have sat on a bench.”