LUSAIL, Qatar — Cristiano Ronaldo went by way of the motions. There he went, wheeling away in delight, his arms aloft. Here got here the signature celebration: the hovering leap from the floor, the twisting of the physique, the clenching of the fists, the nice roar of affirmation. The crowd cheered. This was the second it needed, the excellent shot for an Instagram story.
Like a considerable quantity of this World Cup, although, all was not fairly because it had appeared. Ronaldo had been indulging in an finally innocent — nicely, except you occurred to be Bruno Fernandes — and extraordinarily convincing subterfuge. He may need fooled the crowd. He may need fooled some of his teammates.
But he couldn’t hoodwink the chilly, robotic eye of no matter space-race expertise FIFA is using for the noble and by no means wasteful goal of figuring out the rightful objective scorer at soccer matches. Ronaldo’s head had actually been close to Fernandes’s cross. It had been inside a whisker of it.
A form studying may need it that maybe he touched the ball along with his aura. He could have simply clipped it along with his sense of shallowness. He had not, although, as the replays confirmed and the watchful overlord in the sky noticed, made any contact along with his corporeal kind. The objective belonged to Fernandes.
That reality, fairly clearly, didn’t match neatly into Ronaldo’s model of actuality, and if this event has taught us something, it’s which you could have any model of actuality you need: If a wall that’s there can even not be there, and followers will be actual and additionally false, then why are you able to not rating a objective with the most interesting of glances out of your halo?
Even as the groups had been leaving the discipline on Monday, Portugal’s win 2-0 win over Uruguay and its place in the spherical of 16 secured, Ronaldo was nonetheless protesting, gesturing emphatically to the half of his face — a cheekbone, maybe, or a watch socket — h believed had grazed the ball on its means from Fernandes’s boot to the Uruguayan web.
If the exact geometry of the objective mattered to Ronaldo — and we will assume, at this stage, that these things undoubtedly does matter to Ronaldo — then it didn’t carry any bigger consequence.
Its real-world significance stretched solely to breaking the impasse in a tepid, soporific sport, a monochrome type of a night that stood in stark distinction to the vivid radiance of the day’s earlier choices between Cameroon and Serbia and Ghana and South Korea, and setting Portugal on its option to a easy victory in opposition to a toothless, bitterly underwhelming Uruguay.
Indeed, till the contested objective, the solely second of observe at Lusail had come when a protester — carrying a rainbow flag, sporting a T-shirt bearing the slogans “Save Ukraine” and “Respect for Iranian women” and with the Ukrainian trident tattooed on his arm — had damaged onto the discipline, the first occasion at this event of all the points which have swirled round it intruding on the sport itself.
(*16*) did no matter they may to guarantee that none of the messages seeped into the public’s consciousness. After all, the FIFA World Cup, opened at a grand ceremony in which the emir of Qatar sat subsequent to the crown prince of Saudi Arabia and which has the energy, in keeping with the group’s president, to deliver peace between South and North Korea, is a resolutely nonpolitical occasion.
A steward tackled the protester. The referee rapidly bundled away the rainbow flag. The tv cameras rapidly lower to one thing, the rest — although not fairly rapidly sufficient to keep away from selecting up the colours of the flag — hoping that no person had observed actual life inserting itself into Qatar’s rigorously curated fantasy. That first objective adopted a pair of minutes later. FIFA could nicely have celebrated as wildly as Ronaldo.
Uruguay threatened solely fleetingly to haul Portugal again. There was an opportunity for Maxi Gómez, who rattled the submit, and one other for Luis Suárez, who creaked his rusting physique into place to ship a snapshot into the side-netting, however the flame of resistance rapidly sputtered out. By the time Fernandes added a second objective, coolly changing a penalty awarded for a draconian handball name in opposition to José María Gímenez, Uruguay had all however misplaced hope.
There is a unhappiness in that. This Uruguayan crew has been a reassuringly unchanging presence in the final three World Cups: Diego Godín marshaling the protection, Suárez and Edinson Cavani main the line, a snapping, snarling opponent for all who crossed its path. It has made a semifinal, a quarterfinal and the final 16 in the course of, no imply feat for a nation of three million individuals.
Success at a fourth event, although, has clearly been a step too far. The nation’s previous guard had fallen into disrepair and its new technology, led by the glorious Federico Valverde and the unorthodox, uncategorizable Darwin Nuñez, is just not but prepared. It has the air of a crew caught between eras, not fairly able to say goodbye to the previous however not in a position to wholeheartedly embrace the future.
The identical cost may very well be leveled at Portugal, of course: in spite of everything, it began this sport with Pepe, 39, at the coronary heart of its protection and Ronaldo, a pair of years youthful and raging in opposition to the dying of the mild, main its line.
The distinction, maybe, is in the energy of the supporting forged. Ronaldo has at his disposal not simply Fernandes, however Bernardo Silva, João Félix, João Cancelo and Raphael Guerreiro, depth that can make Portugal a substantial risk to anybody as soon as the knockout rounds begin.
Ronaldo stays the star attraction, of course, the one untouchable, however Portugal is now not reliant on him, not in the means that it as soon as was. Ronaldo may need thought he had determined this sport. It is way extra encouraging, from a Portuguese level of view, to know that he didn’t, because it seems, contact the ball.
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