Roberto Martinez, Cristiano Ronaldo and Portugal’s unforgivable World Cup failure | OneFootball

It’s time to have a conversation about Roberto Martinez.

There has been a Mailbox dissection of how the former Wigan Athletic manager has screwed up a second country’s ‘golden generation’, much in part due to his need to pander to a 41-year-old man-child.

Cristiano Ronaldo obviously cost Portugal by failing to put his ego aside for the greater good of his team and country. It has been clear for years that he was hindering rather than helping a fantastic Portugal side.

Yet no player should be allowed to hold more authority than their manager. Portugal’s failure stems from the very top of the Portuguese Football Federation.

Appointing Martinez was a mistake. A yes man might have worked when Ronaldo was in his pomp, but not now, when a strong manager was necessary to utilise the 41-year-old properly, whether that be as a substitute or as someone whose lack of impact after 60 minutes should have been enough to see him brought off.

The argument against dropping or substituting Ronaldo is that Portugal’s other striker options are not great. That feels like the harsh truth until you realise Goncalo Ramos made a significantly more of an impact in his first half of World Cup knockout football than Ronaldo had managed across five tournaments back in 2022.

Ramos scored one of his three goals in Portugal’s last-16 thrashing of Switzerland in Qatar, and that first half eclipsed Ronaldo’s entire World Cup legacy and his astonishing tally of zero goals from open play in football’s biggest competition at the time.

There were calls for Ronaldo to be hooked – we won’t shy away from that – as Portugal trailed an ageing Croatia side 1-0 in the round of 32 before he stepped up to convert a penalty. His incel fanbase thought that was enough to shut us up and alter the narrative, but penalties don’t really count in this debate. He still has zero open-play goals in World Cup knockout football.

Ramos added his fourth World Cup knockout goal in the dying embers of that game to send Portugal into the last 16 to face Spain.

That might have been enough to earn a start against the European champions, yet he didn’t even get on the pitch as Portugal lost 1-0 and their World Cup dream ended with everyone wondering what could have been.

The fact Ramos didn’t even get on the pitch against Spain is a sackable offence.

Martinez is stepping down – as he said he would before the tournament – and Ronaldo will have retired. That already makes Portugal strong favourites for the 2030 World Cup they will co-host alongside Morocco and Spain.

The Ronaldo tangent was inevitable and unavoidable. Yes, the problems run deeper than him. Martinez’s appointment was wrong and we are not saying that with the benefit of hindsight.

He couldn’t achieve anything with a quite remarkable Belgium side. Winning absolutely nothing is not a crime because major tournaments only come around every two years, meaning many managers only get one crack at both the European Championship and the World Cup, if that.

But Belgium – with Kevin De Bruyne, Thibaut Courtois, Romelu Lukaku, Eden Hazard and Vincent Kompany, to name just a few – never even came close.

Under Martinez, a genuine golden generation from a country with a population of around 11 million reached a World Cup quarter-final, then a semi-final, before failing to get out of their group in 2022. At the European Championship, they could not even reach a semi. We’ve all been there.

The fact Martinez was entrusted with this Portugal squad is blasphemous and the higher powers in Portuguese football deserve all the criticism they are not getting for that decision.

Not only was Martinez lower in the hierarchy than his captain, but he had already underachieved with an arguably better squad under less pressure to succeed and, rather crucially, he is tactically inept.

There was so much wrong with Portugal at the 2026 World Cup.

It felt as though every single player was being used incorrectly. Bruno Fernandes has rarely looked so anonymous or ineffective, while Vitinha played far too deep and you could be forgiven for forgetting Joao Neves was even on the pitch at times.

Ironically, Portugal’s best performers were their defenders, Diogo Costa in goal, and the players who got a rare chance, took it and were rewarded with insignificant minutes, if any.

Ramos didn’t get the opportunity to send Portugal through at Spain’s expense, while Rafael Leao went from arguably being player of the match against Croatia to starting on the bench in the last 16.

Even Ronaldo, who is extremely limited, as should be expected of a player in his 40s, was not utilised in the only way he should have been.

He was dropping deep and trying to get in behind. He can’t run. He can’t dribble. He can’t smash them in from 30-plus yards anymore. He can still be a world-class presence in the box if the service is right.

It wasn’t just wrong; it was non-existent.

This tactical and managerial ineptitude – from Martinez and his bosses – has cost a fantastic team a serious chance of World Cup glory, which would have saved Ronaldo from pretending winning Euro 2016 is just as good as lifting the Jules Rimet.

Portugal won that tournament because of Ronaldo – even though he came off injured early in the final – but they also won it because third-placed teams could progress from the group stage for the first time in European Championship history. There is also the amusing fact that, across seven games, Portugal won only once in 90 minutes, drawing all three group matches to finish behind Hungary and Iceland before requiring extra time or penalties in every knockout round apart from the semi-final against Wales.

We are absolutely not knocking Ronaldo for any of his past accomplishments, nor are we anywhere near being in a position to do so. Promise.

However, we’ll repeat ourselves from a previous piece: if Lionel Messi decides to call it a day, he would be letting an entire country down. If Ronaldo decides to call it a day, he would be doing an entire country a favour.

He will surely be calling it a day following Portugal’s World Cup disaster, and it would be both hilarious and unsurprising if Seleção das Quinas went on to win the 2030 edition.

There is the narrative of Ronaldo’s leadership and the standards he sets, but his Portugal teammates will surely feel a sense of relief when he is gone – whether they admit it or not.

The next managerial appointment must be right, but it can’t go much more wrong than the Martinez debacle. Portugal simply cannot turn to another coach with such glaring international management failings.

Portugal really messed this one up, but their core is young enough to give 2030 a proper crack. Get the managerial appointment right, properly utilise the outstanding players at their disposal, and they’ll be just fine.