Portugal. Autopsy on an announced death
DOHA – It’s been almost fifteen days since the elimination of Portugal against Morocco, in the quarter-finals of this World Cup that has already packed its bags and is preparing to move – we’ll see if there is as much controversy as the one involving Qatar – for the United States (Mexico and Canada only make a figure present), one of those countries that – ironically using the tired argument that it was ridiculous to organize this year’s World Cup in a imprisoned country that has no football tradition –, as we know, is Passionate about football since forever. Not even with the arrival of Pelé, Eusébio, Cruyff, Beckenbauer and such and such, in the 70s, did he manage to get anyone, in addition to the Latinos, to pass a card to the round ball, and to top it off, he already organized the competition (one of the worst competitions in history, say) in 1994. It may have been a painful elimination, ours, for having been against whom it was – we were all waiting for the Spaniards to send us home – and against whom we have a score to settle since 1986 , but it turned out to be very natural considering that Portugal – individually and as a team – is far, far from deserving the fanfare they present it with on the eve of each new major competition.
The national team as it existed from 2014 until now (Fernando Santos signed a contract on the 24th of September, replacing Paulo Bento who qualified Portugal for the World Cup in Brazil but could not resist a home defeat by Albania in the qualifying phase for the 2014 European Championship). França) died and the only reason she hasn’t been buried is because someone doesn’t seem to be very interested in clarifying the floods, as Alexandre O’Neill would say. At the time of carrying out an autopsy on a cadaver that was not only ugly but even stinky, let it be said that this death, which was already slowly following along with very incomprehensible and even less excusable death throes, saw the death certificate signed at the exact moment the engineer decided he no longer wanted to be a national coach. Despite knowing Fernando Santos for something like thirty years and having the general sympathy for him with a playful nature and countless stories that he always had on the tip of his tongue, at a time when journalists, players and coaches created natural close relationships – for the main reason that there were few of us who walked in the wake of teams and identities – we haven’t had time for conversations and at most, we’ll leave promises to keep them through circumstantial messages. Despite the relative distance, there have been many times, in recent times, that the soothsayer has been in anguish. She has, by the way, been in plain sight lately. And if he left Lisbon towards Doha, and then to Al-Shahanyia, where Portugal based its headquarters, after granting an interview in which he exuded serenity, it was clearly with evidence that he attended the press conference in on the eve of the game against Morocco and, I say, with a certain relief that he has left, once and for all, the selection function and the unbelievable number of problems it has caused in recent times.
Will!
Silence seems to be the refuge chosen by everyone after the revelation that Fernando Santos would not continue as coach until the next European Championship, as was registered in his contract. When that is the case, there is no other solution than trying to interpret that silence, or these silences, in this case, because there are several and, I was almost going to write, very audible. Many wills seem to have collided in the period that preceded and lasted the final phase of the World Championship in Qatar, for which we left, once again, under absolutely unjustified vainglory and boasting. And this boasting, so adopted by national communication as a whole, is also responsible for the abrupt fall into a feeling of imprisonment and depression as unjustified as the farronca. When Cristiano Ronaldo offered to offer – it seems to me the right term – to a certain Piers Morgan a visibility that he wouldn’t be able to pay even with a million pounds, using the ‘journalist’ (just like that, with ”) to open a conflict incurable with United and causing the break with the Manchester club, his will was done: I wrote it right here on the day of the separation. Of course, the confidence with which the captain of the national team appeared, right away, also in a press conference, already in Qatar, left in the collective intuition the idea that he already had a guaranteed future and that he would be a club tailored to his still big ambitions. Time passed and, with it, a cloud of accumulated doubts about the reality of Ronaldo’s career. But let’s leave that, as it is a different path from the one I want to take in this text, which tries to be a reflection after a convenient interregnum. Instead of a Ronaldo relieved to have seen the book of the torment he was going through with his coach at United, even more so with a goal in the opening game of the competition, moved that we would be facing an angry Ronaldo: revolted by not being in the news as a candidate to reinforce all the football giants in the world, disgusted with himself because his body doesn’t allow him to do things he used to do with one leg on his back, disgusted with not being the center of football for the national team which was always the emblem and, finally, very, very disgusted to see himself replaced against his will to the point of having uttered an unacceptable and devastating sentence towards the selector – with the added misfortune of having his lips filmed so closely that any kind of denial would be grotesque. Fernando Santos, who always placed his captain at the top of the Portuguese team’s food chain pyramid, who defended him tooth and nail in less intense phases, which – his fault, of course! – released him from all responsibility for the failures that expected to come after his 2019 League of Nations victory, not only will he have been hurt or furious with what he had to see universally exposed, but also being told he would lose respect from the rest of the players, from the staff and accompanied owners, if they do not take a position of unquestioned authority. He took.
Revolution time.
When he sent Ronaldo to the substitutes’ bench against Switzerland, Fernando Santos euphemistically defined the decision as a technical option, but everyone showed that the relationship between him and Cristiano Ronaldo would not suffer again, not least because Ronaldo himself did not withdraw anything from the that he was ‘read’ to say in front of the television cameras, as well as not presenting the indispensable public apology to his manager. The lying victory over a Switzerland – whatever the Camel Fever complained about their coach and, just this week, Didier Deschamps, coach of France, on the eve of the final, whatever it was – was crushed by Portugal without a gesture of rebellion, it may have reinforced the position of the engineer, who did not need Ronaldo to see the team score six goals, but once again provided the outside world with the idea that this selection was better than it actually is.
Morocco harshly returned us to Earth. And the problem had to be solved. I don’t know if the president of the Federation was convinced that with the interruption of the activity of the Portuguese team the issue would be diluted until March, betting on a convenient peace it could be until then, but I am more and more convinced that Fernando Santos was not involved in the configurations and who didn’t want to continue to accept living in a swamp from which they heard there was no other way out than their own way out. And, if we reason with the impossible maintenance of the national team as it is to attack the qualification phase that knocks on the door, isn’t there any reason to accept that a revolution is needed – with or without Ronaldo!? – a revolution that will force you to think further than 2024 and the European Championship in Germany, and will have to broaden your horizons until the next World Cup, at least. Also because the fantastic generation of artists that is there, considered by many people who deviate their judgment as the most brilliant in the history of Portuguese football (for what purpose?), is no longer a generation of boys, with the vast majority reaching the next final phase of the World Cup (if we get there) at 30 years old or even older, except for two or three different honors.
It’s time to leave Qatar and a World Cup that was not only excellent but had a wonderful final, one of the most emotional ever. He didn’t miss our Portugal dos Pequenitos. He didn’t miss Ronaldo, he didn’t miss most of his teammates, perhaps most of all Gonçalo Ramos, the guy who scored the magic goals at Estádio Icônico de Lusail, which had seating for 90,000 people and will soon become a shopping centre. and housing built inside its keel-shaped shell of Dhow, the ships of the Persian Gulf.
For the coach who led the national team to the title of European champion, six years ago, the most recent times were bitter. Perhaps he was already master of his destiny at the time of departure. Now he’ll think it’s not up to him to break the silence. Whoever takes his place will have difficult problems to solve. Problems that are no longer part of the engineer’s accounts.