Eight games, no goals: Cristiano Ronaldo's quest to end his woeful World Cup knockouts record with Portugal

Ronaldo made history at his first World Cup, in 2006, by becoming Portugal's youngest-ever goal-scorer on the game's grandest stage when he converted a penalty in the closing stages of a 2-0 win over Group D rivals Iran on matchday two. It was his only strike of the tournament, though.

Ronaldo was just 21 at the time and still a fleet-footed winger rather than a prolific centre-forward, so the fact that he didn't score in four knockout games as Portugal finished fourth wasn't a major talking point. However, his character became a topic of great debate in Germany.

Ronaldo's every touch was booed during his country's 1-0 semi-final loss to France for having allegedly played a key role in the dismissal of his Manchester United team-mate Wayne Rooney for a foul on Ricardo Carvalho in the last-eight win over England.

"I saw him going over to the referee and giving him the card and I think he was bang out of order," Three Lions midfielder Steven Gerrard said. "If he were one of my team-mates, I would be absolutely disgusted with him. After Wayne was sent off, [Ronaldo] winked at his bench and his team-mates and that just about sums him up as a person."

Frank Lampard added, "He's supposed to be a team-mate of Wayne's at Manchester United and he does something like that. It's not nice, is it? We were told that anyone who tried to get someone else a yellow or red card would get a yellow but it just hasn't happened."

Ronaldo, who slotted home the decisive spot-kick in the shootout win over England, insisted that he had done nothing wrong, but FIFA's technical study group disagreed and named Lukas Podolski the young player of the tournament ahead of the Portuguese in the interest of sportsmanship.

"We want to have decent behaviour and I admit we were critical of this," the group's head, Holger Osieck, admitted. "Players should be role models and fair play is a consideration."

By the time the 2010 World Cup rolled around, Ronaldo was Portugal's captain and expected talisman, so the Seleccao's lame last-16 exit hit him hard. The forward scored just once in South Africa, the sixth goal in a 7-0 rout of North Korea, and it was his first at international level for 16 months.

"I feel completely disconsolate, frustrated and an unimaginable sadness," Ronaldo admitted after Portugal's 1-0 loss to eventual champions Spain.

He also came in for some criticism in his homeland for appearing to pin the blame for the Seleccao's loss on his coach, with Ronaldo caught on camera saying, "How can I explain [this defeat]? Ask that question of Carlos Queiroz."

Ronaldo insisted afterwards that he meant no disrespect. "When I said, ‘Put the question to the coach’, it was just because Carlos Queiroz was holding a press conference," he explained. "I am a human being, and like any human being I suffer and I have the right to suffer alone. I know that I am the captain, and I have always assumed and will assume my responsibilities."

Queiroz responded by declaring that he would never tolerate "anyone placing himself above the best interests of the national side".

"Portugal needs Ronaldo, and Ronaldo needs the national side," Queiroz told AFP. "But if this shirt unnerves some players, they have no grounds to be there."

Ronaldo effectively qualified Portugal for the 2014 World Cup by scoring all four of their goals in their epic play-off win over Sweden. However, while he insisted that he was "100 percent fit" for the finals despite concerns over knee and thigh problems, the then-Real Madrid superstar looked a shadow of his usual self in Brazil.

Ronaldo was anonymous in Portugal's 4-0 loss to Germany on matchday one, and although he set up Silvestre Varela's late leveller in the 2-2 draw with the United States, before scoring an 80th-minute winner against Ghana, the Seleccao finished third in Group G and, thus, failed to even qualify for the knockout stage.

Ronaldo inevitably copped plenty of flak for failing to convert chances that he normally would have buried, though coach Paulo Bento was quick to jump to his captain's defence.

"I don’t think it’s fair to make things individual," the Portugal boss said. "We made a set of mistakes throughout the tournament during three different matches and that’s what penalised us. I shall never hold any individual responsible for this. The responsibility for failing to reach our goal is mine. The players tried to play the roles they had been assigned.

"Cristiano is usually really effective, but suddenly he couldn’t do it. But I’m not going to deem one player responsible."

Ronaldo couldn't have dreamed of a better start to his 2018 World Cup campaign, with the striker hitting a hat-trick in a thrilling 3-3 draw with Spain that included his first-ever free-kick goal at a major international tournament, which in turn earned Portugal a precious point.

"I'm very happy, it is a personal best, one more in my career but the most important thing is to highlight what the team has done," the Seleccao skipper enthused. "We have played one of the favourite teams to win the World Cup, we have been winning twice and drew, and I think it was a fair result. The team is doing very well and we are going to do well for sure." They didn't, though.

Although Ronaldo led Portugal into the last 16, he once again failed to either score or assist in the knockout stage as the Seleccao slumped to a shock 2-1 loss to Uruguay in Sochi.

Given he had already turned 33, there was widespread speculation that the World Cup had seen the last of Ronaldo. However, he remained coy on his international future.

"I reckon it is not the right time to talk about it," Ronaldo told FIFA, "but I am sure that our national team will continue to be one of the best in the world, with awesome players, a fantastic group, and young as well. It’s a group that has a big ambition to triumph and that is why I am happy about everything."

Ronaldo had arrived in Qatar characteristically confident of not only silencing his critics after a shamefully shambolic end to his second spell at Manchester United, but also winning the one trophy to have eluded him. However, he departed in much the same manner as his Old Trafford exit, with his reputation tarnished by public displays of petulance and reports that he had privately threatened to leave the Portugal camp after being dropped for the last-16 clash with Switzerland - which Fernando Santos' side won 6-1 thanks to a hat-trick from Ronaldo's replacement, Goncalo Ramos.

"I just want everybody to know that a lot has been said, a lot has been written, a lot has been speculated about, but my dedication to Portugal has never wavered for an instant," Ronaldo wrote in a social media post the day after Portugal's quarter-final loss to Morocco. "I was always just one more player fighting for everyone's goal and I would never turn my back on my team-mates and my country."

"For now," he added, "there's not much more to say. Thank you, Portugal. Thank you, Qatar... Now, we have to let time be a good adviser and allow everyone to draw their own conclusions."

The common consensus was that Ronaldo was finished at the very highest level. His only goal of the 2022 World Cup had come from the penalty spot, in Portugal's tournament-opening win over Ghana, and he reacted furiously to Fernando Santos' entirely justified decision to take him off in the shock loss to South Korea in the final round of group games.

It was also telling that after being benched against Switzerland and Morocco, a teary-eyed Ronaldo went straight down the tunnel after Portugal's loss to the latter. He was 37 years of age and had just drawn two more blanks in the group stage. Even a man renowned for defying Father Time initially thought that another World Cup was beyond him.

"To win a World Cup for Portugal was the biggest and most ambitious dream of my career," he wrote onInstagram. "In my five appearances at World Cups over 16 years, always playing alongside great players and supported by millions of Portuguese, I have given my all. I left everything I had on the pitch. I'll never shrink from a battle and I have never given up on that dream. Unfortunately, that dream ended yesterday."

Just seconds after the full-time whistle blew in Portugal's 5-0 win over Uzbekistan, Ronaldo turned to the nearby camera and shouted, "I'm back! I'm back!" Not everyone was quite so sure, though, particularly as Ronaldo had flopped in Portugal's opening-round draw with DR Congo.

It also felt as if it would be wrong to read too much into the fact that the Al-Nassr striker had scored twice against a team ranked 60th in the world, and that reluctance to start singing his praises proved prudent, as Ronaldo also struggled against Colombia, who pipped Portugal to top spot in Group K by holding Roberto Martinez's side quite comfortably to a 0-0 draw in Miami.

Consequently, the Seleccao must now face a Luka Modric-led Croatia team that is clearly past its best but still dangerous. Of course, the same could be said about Ronaldo. At 41 years of age, he's already shown he can still score goals at the World Cup. But what he really has to do is finally get one in the knockout stage. Over to you, Cristiano...