{"id":15187,"date":"2025-11-13T10:57:32","date_gmt":"2025-11-13T08:57:32","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/jhb-webdevelopers\/channelafrica\/news\/ronaldo-ready-to-soak-up-dublin-boos-to-ease-pressure-on-portugal\/"},"modified":"2026-02-27T16:27:30","modified_gmt":"2026-02-27T14:27:30","slug":"ronaldo-ready-to-soak-up-dublin-boos-to-ease-pressure-on-portugal","status":"publish","type":"news","link":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/news\/ronaldo-ready-to-soak-up-dublin-boos-to-ease-pressure-on-portugal\/","title":{"rendered":"Ronaldo ready to soak up Dublin boos to ease pressure on Portugal"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Cristiano Ronaldo expects to be booed against Ireland but hopes the attention may ease the pressure on his Portugal teammates during Thursday&#8217;s World Cup qualifier in Dublin.<\/p>\n<p>The 40-year-old cheekily celebrated Ruben Neves&#8217; 91st minute header in front of Irish defender Jake O&#8217;Brien&#8217;s face last month during their 1-0 win in the reverse fixture, but he promised to be a &#8220;good boy&#8221; at the Aviva Stadium. Unbeaten Portugal lead Group F with three wins in four games, and a win will seal their direct qualification to the 2026 World Cup, with Ronaldo aiming to feature in his sixth edition of the tournament.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;The stadium will boo me, but I am used to it. I certainly hope they do. Maybe it will take the pressure off other players,&#8221; Ronaldo told reporters on Wednesday.<\/p>\n<p>Ireland sit third in the group, six points off Portugal and one behind Hungary, and must take at least a point against the Portuguese to keep their play-off hopes alive ahead of their final game against Hungary.<\/p>\n<p>Ronaldo, who plays for Al-Nassr in Saudi Arabia, has scored over 950 goals for club and country and recently said he will hang up his boots in &#8220;one or two years&#8221;.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>&#8211;Reuters&#8211;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"featured_media":15188,"template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false},"news-type":[20],"class_list":["post-15187","news","type-news","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","news-type-sport","entry"],"acf":{"short_description":"Ronaldo plays for Al-Nassr in Saudi Arabia, has scored over 950 goals for club.","published_date":null,"news_description":"Ronaldo plays for Al-Nassr in Saudi Arabia, has scored over 950 goals for club.","form_embed":"","author":"","image_caption":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news\/15187","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/news"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news\/15187\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":19535,"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news\/15187\/revisions\/19535"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/15188"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=15187"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"news-type","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news-type?post=15187"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}