Are Portugal better without Cristiano Ronaldo? Stats since 2022 World Cup reveal trend | OneFootball

Cristiano Ronaldo is undoubtedly the greatest Portuguese player of all time, but is Roberto Martinez’s side actually stronger without him? We’ve crunched the numbers.

Ronaldo has given so much to Portugal over the past 22 years and is the main reason they’ve won three trophies in recent times.

In 226 international appearances, he scored 143 goals and provided 37 assists, averaging a goal contribution every 100 minutes.

With those sorts of numbers, it begs the question of why people would think that Ronaldo is now a hindrance to his country, rather than one of their biggest assets.

This narrative started to gain prominence around the 2022 World Cup, when CR7 found himself in a rut for both club and country.

He only scored one goal during that tournament and his understudy, Goncalo Ramos, was looking sharper at the time.

This led to Ronaldo being benched for Portugal’s quarter-final clash against Morocco, which they ultimately lost 1-0.

Many predicted that was the end for Ronaldo on the international stage, but that couldn’t have been further from the truth.

Since then, he’s rediscovered his mojo for Portugal and has scored 25 goals in 30 games since the 2022 World Cup.

However, following his recent red card against Ireland, the narrative around whether Ronaldo should still be starting for Portugal has once again come around.

In Ronaldo’s absence, Portugal cruised to victory against Armenia, beating them 9-1 to secure their place at the 2026 World Cup.

However, as Portugal have now directly qualified for the tournament, Ronaldo could also miss their opening game of the World Cup due to the same suspension.

With a lot of discourse currently around Ronaldo and Portugal, we’ve compared the national team results with and without him since the 2022 World Cup.

Since then, Portugal have played a total of 36 matches. Of those, CR7 has featured in 30 and has missed six.

In the games Ronaldo has played, Portugal have boasted a win percentage of 70% and have scored an average of 2.2 goals per game.

Without Ronaldo, Portugal’s win percentage drops to 66.6%, although their goal-per-game ratio jumps to 4.8.

Of course, the sample size of games without Ronaldo is very small, meaning that the odd freak result will have a larger impact on the numbers.

For example, Ronaldo didn’t feature in Portugal’s 9-0 hammering of Luxembourg back in 2023, which boosts the numbers quite a bit in this regard.

We’ll let you be the judge of whether or not CR7 should still be starting for Portugal, but here’s the full breakdown of what the stats say:

Portugal’s record with Ronaldo since 2022 World Cup