IT’S THE END OF AN ERA
First Messi, now Ronaldo as Portugal are also sent crashing by superb Uruguay
THE mighty fell one after the other at the World Cup yesterday. It was as if they were two halves of an old couple, neither of whom could live after the other had gone. First, it was Lionel Messi, vanquished by the teenage brilliance of Kylian Mbappe, and then a few hours later and 1,200 miles to the south, it was Cristiano Ronaldo, who tried extravagantly to drag his team past Uruguay and failed.
And so the tournament lost them both on the same day. And the thing is that the tournament has been so good that it feels as if it might not actually miss them. For the first time in careers that have defied the years for so long, it felt last night as though maybe Ronaldo and Messi belong to the past now and that Portugal’s defeat by the shores of the Black Sea marked the second act of the changing of the guard in football’s superstar world order.
Many had hoped that Portugal and Argentina would win their second round ties so that the two men might meet in one last titanic battle in the quarter final in Nizhny Novgorod. Neither man made it. The two played out their own private feud right until the bitter end. Even as their worlds crumbled around them, they were cocooned in the battle for supremacy that has defined football for the last decade. And as they fought and argued and boasted, others stepped forward to take centre stage. It is unlikely that either Ronaldo or Messi will return in Qatar four years hence to try to reclaim their crowns.
Ronaldo had taken to the pitch at the Fisht Olympic Stadium with a goatee beard sprouting from his chin. It was part of the private joke that was not really much of a joke at all. Offended because Messi had filmed an adidas advert with a goat, Ronaldo interpreted that as a boast that Messi thought he was the Greatest of All Time. He responded with his goatee.
And as they fought, they fell. They have triumphed together and dominated together for more than a decade and yesterday chunks of their career died together.
Earlier in the evening, 1,200 miles to the north in Kazan, Messi had done his utmost to haul his fractured, dysfunctional, misfiring Argentina side into the last eight of the tournament but the superhuman feats he performs on a regular basis for Barcelona are on shorter rations at World Cups and France were simply too young and too good.
Amid the euphoria of watching such a vibrant French performance, there was something poignant about seeing Messi upstaged by the teenage superstar talent of Mbappe, whose speed and boldness were too much for Argentina’s habitually ragged defence to cope with.
Those searching for the heir to Messi and Ronaldo felt they did not have far to look.
Messi is 31 now and although he has kept age at bay when he plays at the Nou Camp, the youth and the optimism and the vigour of Mbappe made Messi look old, perhaps for the first time in his career. He still created two of Argentina’s three goals but when the final whistle sounded his team’s elimination, he stood stock still near the centre circle, blank and outwardly emotionless.
Ronaldo hurtled into the game against Uruguay like a man on a mission. He started with a couple of extravagant stepovers and after he had been the object of a particularly industrial foul from a Uruguay defender, he ran on to a short pass from Bernardo Silva and hit a fierce low shot straight at Fernando Muslera.
But then in the seventh minute, Edinson Cavani collected the ball on the right and drilled a long ball out to the left to Luis Suarez. Suarez was looking up to see where Cavani was even as he cut inside Ricardo Pereira and the former Liverpool player found him perfectly with a cross hit to the back post with pace and curl. Cavani rose unmarked and headed the ball into the roof of the net.
Ronaldo did his best to rally his side, mainly by adopting a shoot-on-sight policy, but Suarez was still orchestrating play more effectively for Uruguay. Midway through the half, he drew a clumsy foul from Jose Fonte 25 yards out and then lashed the free kick low towards Rui Patricio’s bottom left hand corner. Patricio dived full length to push it away.
A few minutes later, Ronaldo finally got his own chance with the dead ball. Rodrigo Bentancur barged into Goncalo Guedes on the edge of the box and everyone knew this was prime Ronaldo territory. Everyone knew this was roughly where he had scored the equaliser from in the dying minutes against Spain. He hitched up his shorts, his usual ritual, and then blasted the ball straight into the wall.
Ten minutes after half time, Portugal were level. When Raphael Guerreiro swung a cross over from the left, Ronaldo rose highest in the box but the ball was too high for him. As its trajectory grew lower, Pepe leapt behind Ronaldo and met the ball in the middle of his forehead, powering it past Fernando Muslera.
But parity did not last long. Five minutes later, Uruguay broke and spread the ball wide to Cavani on the left. Cavani made up his mind what he was going to do long before it reached him. He ran on to it, opened his body and curled the ball beyond Patricio with his right foot. It was a beautiful companion for his first goal.
Near the half way line, Ronaldo looked to the heavens and threw his arms up in the air in that gesture of
petulance that has become one of his less edifying trademarks. Again and again he did it, as Uruguay celebrated far away in the corner, unable to understand how his teammates could have let this happen to him.
They nearly dragged themselves back into the game a second time when Muslera came far, far off his line to try to claim a cross and dropped it.
He chased after it like a kid trying to catch a bouncy ball but Bernardo Silva nicked it away from him. Muslera was nowhere now but Silva could not control his shot, on his weaker right foot, and it climbed over the bar.
Ronaldo did his theatrical best to wrest an equaliser but it would not come. Almost his last act was to be booked. He would have missed the showdown with Messi anyway.
He will be 37 when the next World Cup comes around.
The greatest days of the greatest showmen on earth may be behind them.