Cristiano Ronaldo Has Lost His Damn Mind

As someone who broadly finds international breaks boring—and this current double break painfully so—I have to express gratitude to Cristiano Ronaldo for having a complete meltdown over his spot on the Portuguese national team. While his performance at the World Cup was oftentimes funny and almost always more than a little sad, this current freakout is just bizarre. OK, it’s also still pretty funny. The timeline: On Sept. 24, during the first game of this seemingly endless international break, Ronaldo started for Portugal against Wales in the first of four Nations League matches over the past fortnight. He played about as well as he did at the World Cup (so, not well at all), and was subbed off in the 67th minute. Readers with a decent memory might remember the minor hubbub over then-manager Roberto Martinez subbing Ronaldo out of the round of 32 match against Croatia, a match Portugal would go on to win after the substitution. That controversy had nothing with what was coming, though. Three days after the Wales match, Portugal played Norway in Oslo. Ronaldo did not start that game, nor did he sub on. Portugal won 2-1. Three days after that, Ronaldo left the national team camp ahead of the Oct. 1 match against Denmark (4-2 win for Portugal), and did not show up to the final match of the break on Oct. 4 against Norway again, this time in Portugal. (You know where I’m going with this: Portugal won 2-1.) In the middle of all that, Portuguese newspaper O Jogo reported that Ronaldo hadn’t just taken his ball and gone home, but had in fact, finally, retired from the national team.

Read it at Defector ↗

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