This isn’t exactly true. He’s had big and influential games vs Holland and Spain, he singlehandedly won the 2014 two leg playoff bs Sweden. After losing their first game in qualifying for the 2016 Euro, he went on to lead European qualifying in scoring and carried Portugal into the tournament.
The guy had scored 51 goals in his past 42 games played for Portugal going back to the start of the 2013 calendar year, and of his 88 international goals, only 17 have come in friendlies. The rest have been in competitive matches.
Now your point on the 3rd place qualifying for knockout stage for the first time in 2016 isn’t wrong, but I implore you to look into that final group stage game vs Hungary closely again - with the score tied at 3 with 20 minutes left in the game and both teams assured of qualifying for the knockouts, both teams completely stopped playing. It’s a situation we’ve seen before in similar circumstances when both teams decide to stop taking risks and just play out the final minutes and take the assured qualification. For the first 65 minutes of thst game, many people were claiming it to be the game of the tournament, and that’s what the historical narrative will be, but many people don’t remember how poorly that game ended with both teams not competing anyone and just passing the ball along their back fours.
So I’m not going to say that had the qualification to the knockout completely relied on the result of that gane that Portugal definitely would’ve scored to win it, but considering that Hungary scored two of the most heavily deflected goals you’ll ever see and that Portugal was turning the screw to get the equalizer until both teams stopped playing, they’d a strong chance that they would’ve if qualifying for the knockout was fully reliant on a win in that game.
Sorry I don't remember, Sweden/Portugal? Is that a WC game?
No it's not. It's a playoff game because Portugal couldn't even qualify from a weak ass group. That's an awful achievement, and again, not even one in the WC or EC.
Again, you fail to mention big games in the WC and EC.
The only dominant performance I can remember are against North Korea (6-0 or something like that) and Hungary (3-3).
He was hardly good in that Spain game and everyone knows it.
As for the whatifs of the Hungary game, yes, let's not go there. Portugal could also have lost.
So I stand by what I said : saying you take Ronaldo for a big NT final is laughable given his two appearances. Portugal won one tournament with Ronaldo, and that was on the back of great defending, goaltending and defensive coaching. Bernardo Silva also sucked offensively, so Ronaldo was not alone.
It's really the same as Messi, Aguero, Di Maria and all of them sucking for Argentina.
At some point, coaching has a lot to do with it.
But saying Ronaldo is somehow superior to Messi with the NT is beyond ridiculous. They're both extremely weak. But then again, consider the source.