Kolkata: Ricardo Pepi stepped in for Christian Pulisic and did okay. Igor Thiago made way for Matheus Cunha and Brazil breathed again. Argentina have successfully played around Lionel Messi.
All of which leads to the question: can Portugal find a silver bullet to the Cristiano Ronaldo problem?
Thierry Henry saying the team, not Ronaldo, needs to score has aged well after the 1-1 draw against DR Congo. Between that and Tuesday’s match against Uzbekistan, Joao Neves has found an anodyne comment about Ronaldo being part of the collective being mangled on the internet. Hopefully, there won’t be the kind of internal combustion that flattened France in 2010 but to the Ronaldo conundrum, Portugal need an answer. Fast.
The 2026 opener was the 10th major tournament match where he couldn’t score, the last was a penalty against Ghana in Qatar in 2022. Of course, all of this will be “Siuued” away if Ronaldo gets Portugal’s campaign back on track. But what if he is on the fringes again?
The thing is: a shadow of his earlier self or not, Ronaldo has the numbers. He has scored 15 times for Portugal since 2024. Last year, he scored eight goals in nine internationals.
As per Opta, Ronaldo took more shots per 90 minutes (7.44) in this qualifying campaign than he had on the road to Qatar (5.67 per 90). Metrics such as dribbles attempted, duels won or chances created have gone down but shots inside the box have risen, as per The Athletic.
Value to the team
This raises the question of how much he contributes to the team cause. But like with Argentina and Messi (he ran almost 4km less than the average distance covered by the team against Algeria), Kylian Mbappe and France or Norway and Erling Haaland, Portugal should have got used to this. Because Ronaldo shifted inside from the wing before they won the 2016 European championship.
And because nearly 23 years after his international debut, the goals have kept coming. Portugal’s captain has 143 goals for his country and went to the World Cup after top-scoring for Al-Nassr (30 goals in 37 matches) in 2025-26. Ronaldo averaged a goal every 75 minutes to get Portugal to the 2026 finals. Portugal scored 28 goals in the qualifiers, five of them from Ronaldo off 31 shots. To qualify for 2022, he had six from 51 shots. Go back one more edition and the number from 70 shots is 15 goals, one less than Haaland’s tally this time.
Portugal have an abundance of attacking midfielders and wide players. They also have marauding full backs and reliable defenders. What they do not have as many are elite strikers. The 2016 Euros was won by a goal from Eder. He needed 18 matches for his first goal and faded not long after the historic strike against France.
Joao Felix and Goncalo Ramos can replace Ronaldo on Tuesday. Felix scored against Nigeria in a warm-up game but his last international goal before that came in September 2025. Felix, 26, is Ronaldo’s teammate at Al-Nassr and usually plays behind him with Sadio Mane and Kingsley Coman. As per Transfermarkt, Felix scored 26 goals in 47 matches for his club in 2025-26.
The figures are underwhelming for Ramos who has a World Cup hattrick. Since that round-of-16 rout of Switzerland in 2022, Ramos has struggled for game time at Paris St-Germain scoring 12 goals in 1704 minutes spread over 45 matches in all competitions in 2025-26. Ramos, 25, didn’t play one full match in PSG’s successful defence of the Champions League and started only five in Ligue 1. He has two goals in 12 internationals since March 2025.
Lack of quality strikers
The top four scorers in the past three seasons of the Primeira Liga, Portugal’s top league, are not Portuguese. And neither did anyone from Portugal top the goal charts in Europe’s top five in 2025-26. Portugal do not have a big, muscular centre-forward like Brian Brobbey or Romelu Lukaku. Nor do they have a player like Harry Kane or Cunha who can drop into midfield and drag defences out of position. Or a Mo Salah who shifted to a more central role and helped Egypt notch up their first win in a World Cup.
Ergo, Ronaldo. “Cristiano is an example because of his career and the hunger he still possesses at 41 years of age… An example of leadership and the goals he scores,” said wide player Francisco Conceicao.
Yet three shots, none on target, and 25 touches which ranked third from bottom among starters on both sides could merit a rethink. Amarildo (1962) and Salvatore Schillaci are strikers who have lit up World Cup finals but were not Brazil and Italy’s first-choice players. Someone from Portugal may well step up. Or, will they play another way? Use one of Bernardo Silva or Bruno Fernandes as a false nine? Spain won a World Cup without a striker. But adopting this usually needs time, and that is the one thing national team bosses do not have.