Cristiano Ronaldo hasn’t faced every European soccer player during his career, but it sometimes feels that way.
Ronaldo will start for Portugal against Georgia on Wednesday. The European Championships have been part of his story arc for so long that he faced guys who are now grandfathers, like former England goalkeeper David James.
James isn’t even the oldest of all Ronaldo’s Euros opponents. That distinction belongs to former Netherlands forward Pierre Van Hooijdonk, now 54, three-and-a-half decades older than the youngest of the group of individuals who knows what it’s like to meet Ronaldo at the Euros.
That’s Kenan Yildiz of Turkey, 19, who Portugal faced last week in Group F, and wasn’t even born when the Al-Nassr forward made his tournament debut in the summer of 2004.
On Wednesday, Ronaldo’s Portugal will play against a group of players from Georgia who say it is like a dream to share a field with him. Those players are led by a head coach who used to be a World Cup star but now sports a distinguished silver beard and a few spare pounds around the middle.
And yep, Ronaldo played against him too.
“I don’t know if it makes me old or if it makes him old,” Georgia head coach and former France international Willy Sagnol told The Telegraph. Sagnol clashed with Ronaldo at the 2006 World Cup, Ronaldo’s sprint down the wing and Sangol’s spirited attempt to slow him down featured on the official FIFA highlights video.
“We are talking about one of the best players in football history — on the same level as Pele, (Diego) Maradona, Zinedine Zidane,” Sagnol added. “Iconic players. The difference is that he reached the top of football but is still playing and performing.
“He’s going to be such a great source of motivation for my players because they will all want to play against him. Georgia hasn’t faced Portugal in qualification, so my players have only dreamed of playing against Ronaldo. Now it’s the reality and that is a source of extreme motivation.”
Portugal has already secured the top spot in Group F on account of its pair of wins against Czechia and Turkey, but Martinez confirmed he would not be giving his 39-year-old superstar a chance to rest his legs.
“I can tell you that the captain will be in the starting 11,” Martinez told reporters. “He played in one preparation game and he had a very consistent season this year. He has played many minutes and that is important to the competitive levels, it is not good to start and stop.”
Although Ronaldo has not scored yet, his unselfish pass to Bruno Fernandes against Turkey gave him a share of the all-time Euros assists record, with eight.
Portugal will face a third-place finisher in Frankfurt next Monday, and although forward Joao Felix is likely to feature against Georgia and goalkeeper Diogo Costa, plus Ronaldo, were confirmed, Martinez kept quiet about the makeup of his starting group.
“It won’t be a revolution,” Martinez said. “It will be a competitive team that wants to win.”
When Ronaldo and Lionel Messi are discussed as the best players of their generation, it is a little deceiving. By soccer norms, 20 years isn’t a generation, it’s more like two, even with modern science prolonging careers more than ever.
Since 2004, across six Euros tournaments, Ronaldo has competed against players born in five different decades and has won the tournament once, in 2016.
Portugal is playing as well as any other squad right now and Martinez has worked swiftly and emphatically to shut down any suggestion that Ronaldo might be best served coming off the bench.
The opportunity to go on a deep run is tantalizing, even though Ronaldo is no longer the only focus of the team’s attack.
Teammates have spoken glowingly about his impact and a point of focus for Ronaldo this time has been to try to generate as relaxed a mood as possible in the camp.
It seems to be working, and the Portugal squad isn’t sweating the small stuff. Or the big stuff, particularly.
Felix said that Portugal had been aware that if results fell a certain way on Monday, they could have found themselves facing defending champion Italy. Were they bothered? It doesn’t appear so.
“We knew about that,” Felix said. “I saw Croatia’s first goal and to be honest, I didn’t think Italy was going to score so I went back to playing cards with my teammates.”
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