DOHA: To Bruno Fernandes, World Cup teammate Cristiano Ronaldo is the most famous athlete in sports.Joao Felix has described Ronaldo as “irreplaceable.”Gonçalo Ramos, Portugal’s new 21-year-old star, has never known his national team without Ronaldo involved in it.A future without the country’s greatest ever player could be a daunting prospect to the up-and-coming generation of Portugal internationals.They aren’t showing it at the World Cup.In fact, they showed they might even be liberated by stepping out of Ronaldo’s long shadow given the way Portugal demolished Switzerland 6-1 in the round of 16 on Tuesday.Turns out there is life after the five-time world player of the year, even if that is hard for some to imagine.Portugal coach Fernando Santos wanted a team “playing with a lot of fluidity” against Switzerland and that invariably meant leaving the 37-year-old Ronaldo — the player with more goals (118) than anyone in men’s international football — on the bench.
It was a big call and it couldn’t have gone better, at least against Switzerland.It’s a call that Erik ten Hag has made at Manchester United this season, preferring to have more mobile players in his front four than an undoubted goal machine whose movement is no longer what it was.It took until the round of 16 for Santos to make that move at the World Cup, with his convictions strengthened by his obvious unhappiness at Ronaldo’s attitude after being substituted in the group game against South Korea.The Portuguese football federation insisted Thursday that Ronaldo was dedicated to the team, saying he had built up a “unique track record every day” of service for his country and had an “unquestionable degree of commitment to the national team.”That won’t.