Cristiano Ronaldo is 41, but Portugal coach Roberto Martinez said age is only a number and that his captain is judged on current \u200bform and by the same standards as everyone else.
\nRonaldo could play in a sixth World Cup with this year’s tournament in North America \u200cset to begin in less than a month, a staggering possibility even for a player who has twisted football\u2019s record books into new shapes.<\/p>\n
Yet Martinez, speaking to Reuters<\/em> in Lisbon on Thursday, insisted Portugal were not carrying a monument to past glory.<\/p>\n “We manage the Cristiano Ronaldo that plays for the national team trying to get into the squad for 2026, not the iconic figure,” Martinez \u200bsaid.<\/p>\n The debate in Portugal is less whether Ronaldo, the record scorer in international football with 143 goals, belongs in the squad and more what his \u200brole should be when World Cup margins are razor-thin.<\/p>\n For Martinez, the calculation is simple. Ronaldo the player is assessed on what \u2060he does in training and for the team.<\/p>\n “Age is only a number,” Martinez said. “Certainly in the national team we can measure exactly what’s happening on the day, and \u200byou make the decisions for the next day. You never look any longer than the next day.”<\/p>\n On the question of how to use Ronaldo at \u200ba World Cup where matches swing on substitutions, tactical shifts and games that stretch into extra time and penalties, Martinez argued modern football has moved past treating the starting lineup as the only measure of status.<\/p>\n “Now we’ve got five substitutions. It’s almost like we’ve got a starting team and a finishing team. There is no distinction,” he said. “There are different roles and Cristiano has always \u200baccepted his role.”<\/p>\n The question of whether Ronaldo would accept a reduced role has lingered since the 2022 World Cup, when then-coach Fernando Santos benched him against Switzerland \u200bafter the final group match against South Korea.<\/p>\n Martinez declined to draw direct parallels between tournaments, saying form, style and context change. But he stressed that Ronaldo\u2019s place, like everyone else\u2019s, rests on \u200cmerit. Martinez said Ronaldo is far more than a ceremonial presence. He pointed to 25 goals in 30 Portugal appearances under his management, a better goals-per-game ratio than under any of Ronaldo\u2019s previous national-team coaches, and said his value also \u200bshows up in details that raw numbers \u200bmiss.<\/p>\n “He is fantastic at those movements, \u2060those runs, opening spaces, splitting centre halves,” Martinez said.<\/p>\n “He’s been disciplined to be in the right positions, always executing the attacking patterns that we have. And that gives him opportunities to score as he’s done, but the opportunity of opening space for our \u200bplayers.”<\/p>\n –Reuters–<\/p>\n","protected":false},"featured_media":16292,"template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false},"news-type":[20],"class_list":["post-34577","news","type-news","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","news-type-sport","entry"],"acf":{"short_description":"Ronaldo the player is assessed on what \u2060he does in training and for the team.","published_date":"","news_description":"Ronaldo the player is assessed on what \u2060he does in training and for the team.","form_embed":"","author":"","image_caption":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news\/34577","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\/34577\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":34580,"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news\/34577\/revisions\/34580"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/16292"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=34577"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"news-type","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news-type?post=34577"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\n“All the \u2060players are in the same space in the national team where when they play well, when they execute their role well to help the team to win, they have a better chance to play than when they don’t do it. It’s as simple as that,” he said.<\/p>\n