Cristiano Ronaldo is threatening to hold Portugal hostage until 2026 - Roberto Martinez needs to grow a backbone if he wants World Cup success

It was clear after the 2022 World Cup that Ronaldo no longer deserved to be a starter for the Seleccao. Fernando Santos had even come to that conclusion during the tournament in Qatar and made the brave call to drop his captain for the last-16 clash with Switzerland. Replacement Goncalo Ramos responded by scoring a historic hat-trick as Portugal triumphed 6-1 in Lusail.

However, the shock quarter-final loss to Morocco left Santos vulnerable, and the man who masterminded Portugal's Euro 2016 triumph resigned just five days after that 1-0 defeat in Doha.

According to the Portuguese Football Federation (FPF), it was time "to start a new cycle", offering the incoming coach a perfect opportunity to rebuild without Ronaldo. Roberto Martinez instead opted to immediately fly to Saudi Arabia and convince the captain to continue. It was a catastrophic error, one compounded by Martinez's repeated refusal to drop Ronaldo at Euro 2024.

Ronaldo's uncharacteristically unselfish assist for Bruno Fernandes in the group-stage win over Turkey was promptly portrayed as evidence of the skipper's supposed transformation into a team player. However, that illusion had been shattered long before Portugal's quarter-final loss to a desperately weak France team that could easily have been beaten had Martinez played either Diogo Jota or Ramos up front in Hamburg.

By that stage, though, Martinez had clearly decided that there was no going back. Ronaldo's right to lead the line was the hill he was willing to die on and he couldn't even bring himself to rest the 39-year-old in Portugal's final group game against Georgia.

The likes of Bruno Fernandes and Bernardo Silva were dropped to the bench as Martinez made eight changes to his starting line-up, but Ronaldo started yet again. Another goal-less display only heightened the striker’s sense of desperation, and what we saw against Slovenia in the last 16 was the most pathetic and shameful show of selfishness ever seen on a football field, with the five-time Ballon d'Or winner taking ever more ludicrous strikes on goal in a bid to break his tournament duck.

It was genuinely tough to watch one of the finest players of all time embarrassing himself in such fashion and he ended up not only hurting his team, but also himself, with Ronaldo bursting into tears not long after missing a penalty in extra-time. He shouldn't have even been on the field at that stage, but Martinez's complete lack of a backbone had already been laid bare and, ultimately, he and Ronaldo were bailed out by Diogo Costa's heroics in the shootout.

Martinez, the master of misdirection, attempted to portray Ronaldo's reaction to his spot-kick miss as evidence of his patriotism, but as the man himself subsequently confessed, he hadn’t been thinking about Portugal at all. He was simply upset with having allowed Jan Oblak to ruin his run of successful penalty attempts.

It was a remarkable revelation, simultaneously shocking and yet utterly unsurprising, an astonishing admission that, as far as Ronaldo is concerned, it really is all about him. It was, therefore, inevitable that he would resist all pressure to retire, making it clear that he only cares about doing what is best for him.

It was at this point that Martinez should have intervened.

Ronaldo’s superpower has always been his unwavering sense of self-belief; now, though, it's become his weakness. It’s as if he has lost all grip on reality, because he really does seem to believe he can get the better of the undefeated Father Time, which is simply delusional.

After being predictably picked for Portugal's latest Nations League squad, Ronaldo said that he had never even considered quitting international football: "Quite the opposite, in fact. The criticism gives me even more motivation to continue, to be honest."

He also claimed that he'll know when the time is right for him to walk away. "If I feel like I'm no longer contributing anything, I'll be the first to leave,” he insisted. “It won't be a difficult decision to make."

All of the evidence points to the contrary, though. Even Ronaldo's former Manchester United team-mate Gary Neville has serious reservations over whether the veteran superstar knows when to walk away.

"I don't think he's [Cristiano Ronaldo] got it in him," Neville told The Overlap. "The player sometimes knows when to let it go, but there are some players who don't and need telling, but there is an element here of who tells [Ronaldo]?"

Because Martinez clearly doesn't have that in him either.

Ronaldo admitted only this week that “until the end of my career, I will always have the mindset that I will be a starter” - which should be utterly unrealistic, and yet it now appears perfectly plausible that Martinez will continue picking Ronaldo for Portugal until Ronaldo decides otherwise.

Ronaldo unquestionably deserved better than to bow out after a humiliating Euros campaign. He is the international game’s all-time leading goal-scorer and appearance-maker, so it could have been agreed that he would walk away after one more appearance in front of an adoring public in Portugal. It would have made for a fittingly fond farewell and offered everyone involved a much-needed chance to move on.

However, there’s now every reason to believe that Ronaldo intends to continue until the 2026 World Cup. Rio Ferdinand even recently admitted on his own podcast that he was “gobsmacked” by his former team-mate’s retirement plan: “I can’t give too much away, but I’ve been doing a few bits with Cristiano behind the scenes and he’s playing as long as he wants. He ain’t going nowhere.” Which is a major problem for Portugal.

Ronaldo has made a point of saying how he has such an important role to play in aiding the development of the new, young faces in the Seleccao, but he’s not a help anymore, he’s a hindrance, a damaging distraction. Team-mates now spend their time consoling a captain that can't cope with the fact that he can no longer carry his country, and as long as he remains the star of the show, there won’t be room for anyone else to shine.

Portugal should have at least made the semi-finals in Germany, given the strength of their squad and the ease of their draw, and even the Ronaldo of three years ago would have run riot in the group stage.

But the scale of his decline was laid bare, the erosion of his attacking attributes far worse than first feared. As the likes of Roy Keane and Gary Lineker pointed out, Ronaldo’s movement in the box remains excellent, but the sharpness that made him a superstar is long gone.

Even Martinez admitted while reflecting on the Euros that Portugal had been punished for their profligacy. “We should have scored five more goals in our games. We created the chances and the statistics prove it,” he told Portuguese website Zerozero. “But our finishing wasn’t at the level we expected.”

At that point, any manager with the courage of his convictions would have dropped the starting striker that failed to convert any of his 23 shots on goal in Germany - but Martinez isn’t strong; he’s spineless, so he has stuck by Ronaldo, which doesn’t do anyone any favours.

Martinez has once again made himself appear weak, while Ronaldo really needed to be saved from himself. Instead, one of the game’s greats runs the very real risk of only further ruining a legacy that has already been tarnished by the tears of 2022 and 2024.

As for Portugal’s supporters, they've never been in the Seleccao dressing room, but they've already seen enough to know that with Martinez at the wheel, and Ronaldo now nothing more than a passenger, they need to brace themselves for yet another car crash in two years’ time.