KHARKIV, UKRAINE—Cristiano Ronaldo finally found the form he was lacking at the European Championship, scoring twice Sunday to give Portugal a 2-1 win over the Netherlands and a spot in the quarterfinals.
The Real Madrid forward failed to sparkle in Portugal’s two previous matches but he was devastating against the Dutch. He produced an equalizer with his first goal of the tournament in the 28th minute and scored the winner in the 74th.
“Ronaldo got so much criticism in the last game and he is back now,” Netherlands coach Bert Van Marwijk said. “That is how fast things can change.”
Needing a win to have a chance at staying in the tournament, the disappointing Dutch fielded an impressive attacking lineup featuring Klaas-Jan Huntelaar and Robin van Persie up front, but it wasn’t enough to keep them at Euro 2012.
“We started quite well but we were playing against one of the better teams today,” Rafael van der Vaart said. “We lost three times. We were bad and we don’t deserve to go through.”
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The Dutch lost in the World Cup final to Spain two years ago and, with stars like Van Persie, Arjen Robben and Wesley Sneijder, had anticipated a strong run at Euro 2012.
Instead, it will be Portugal in the quarterfinals facing the Czech Republic on Thursday in Warsaw.
“It won’t be easy. We’ll have to be this good again to reach the semifinals,” Portugal coach Paulo Bento said.
Van der Vaart gave the Netherlands the lead in the 11th minute at the Metalist Stadium, but Portugal then took control of the match.
And it was Ronaldo that stole the show.
Portugal cranked up the pressure after falling behind, with Ronaldo probing the Dutch back line and equalizing from Joao Pereira’s pass. It was the kind of chance he took so often at Real Madrid last season, when he scored 60 goals for his club, but wasted in Portugal’s opening matches.
For his second, he received a pass from former Manchester United teammate Nani, coolly wrong-footed his marker and tapped the ball past the goalkeeper.
Portugal opened Euro 2012 with a 1-0 loss to Germany but rebounded to beat Denmark 3-2. The Portuguese went into the match against the Netherlands with an unchanged team from those encounters.
“Once again we showed how united we are as a team,” Portugal midfielder Miguel Veloso said. “It wasn’t easy to start with a defeat. The secret was our defending, our humility.”
After losing their first two games to Denmark and Germany when they started with a lone striker, Van Marwijk added Huntelaar alongside Van Persie, the leading scorers in the Bundesliga and Premier League, respectively. But Huntelaar was a spectator for most of the game, while Sneijder was stuck on the left wing in an unexpected tactical decision Van Marwijk.
The Netherlands have beaten Portugal only once in their past 10 meetings, in 1991.
The greatest player of all time first rubbished Lionel Messi because he lacks ability with his head (it went unsaid that Messi was born 500 kilometres too far to the south to be endorsed by a Brazilian).
“And Cristiano Ronaldo,” the interviewer suggested.
“Ronaldo is (and here a presumable pause to locate the proper place to stick the knife) a very good player.” That’s not so bad.
“In the same way that David Beckham was a very good player.”
That’s pretty bad.
It has become the done thing to raise Ronaldo up just high enough that a good push will make him look especially clumsy on the way down. He doesn’t help himself with the reflexive preening, the girlish pout. Most nights, he shares the disease of his Dutch counterpart Arjen Robben — he’ll make a pass about as often as a nun.
But when he tires of the theatrics, is given the space and just plays — as he did Sunday against the Netherlands — he is one of the most compelling athletes walking the planet.
Ronaldo beat the Dutch 2-1 on Sunday night. Portugal didn’t. He did it by himself. Though it is axiomatic that no football player can win on his own, Ronaldo did it anyway.
His first goal, a strike so surgical he needed to disinfect before taking it, put the Portuguese through. After tallying, Ronaldo stopped, raised his arms and summoned his teammates over, flapping his hands impatiently like a maitre d’.
Having received sufficient attention from his vassals, he turned to the camera, sucked his thumb and yelled, “Magnifico!”
It was, but would have been more so if he hadn’t pointed it out. That’s the part of the man that drives so many admirers away.
His second goal was so fine, so ridiculously accomplished, it required no narration.
Ronaldo began a breakout well behind the halfway line. As a half-dozen men darted toward the Dutch goalmouth, Nani squared the ball cross-field to . . . Ronaldo.
Starting from a dead stop while everyone else was well ahead of him and in motion, Ronaldo ended up open on the wing, five yards in front of the pack.
He’s probably the only player in the world with both the vision and the speed to manage something like it. The crossover to dump his marker and the lazily taken finish were the least of it.
This doesn’t take into account five or six other chances that were nearly goals. It was going so well, Ronaldo deigned to begin passing. When his teammates flubbed chances he had created, Ronaldo didn’t embarrass them with exaggerated arm-flaps and childish exhibits of frustration. He only turned and walked back to begin the takeover again.
If that Ronaldo, the quiet professional, showed up more often than the spread-legged, blowfishing, look-at-me, look-at-me, I’m-taking-a-free-kick-now Ronaldo, he’d already be too legendary for Pele to dismiss.
This tournament has been full of great games. All 20 matches thus far have featured at least one goal.
What it lacked was a transcendent individual performance.
Ronaldo — both the most and least likely man to supply it, given the twin poles of his skill and his history — has spun Euro 2012 in the direction of greatness.
Last week, he walked himself into quicksand by taking a swipe at Messi. He stood upon the dubious logic that he can’t be compared unfavourably to the winsome Argentinean because neither man has accomplished anything on the international stage. The entrance to the centrifuge of mockery he spends so much time pressed up against the walls of was gaping again. On Sunday night, he walked on by. Now Ronaldo is finally poised to carry through on a decade of posturing.
In the quarters, Portugal faces the Czechs, a team still searching for an identity here. (Second place never looked so good, since it’s the Germans who get to wrangle with the escape artists of Greece.) It’s wrong to look past the Czechs, but it’s also tempting, since the quarters are not nearly big enough a mould to recast Ronaldo’s reputation.
Beyond that, in the semis — Spain? England? And then . . . well, let’s not hex the man. He deserves that much at least.
For years now, Ronaldo has made it easy for the rest of us to hate him. From the moment he made his stutter-stepping debut with Manchester United wearing small ribbons tied into his hair, like a show pony, his self-confidence has always manifested as narcissism. On some level, he must thrive on the animus this creates. Why else would he act the way he does?
Maybe things changed Sunday.
Perhaps Ronaldo has decided that, just this once, he will stop playing the game only for himself, and finally play it for the rest of us as well.
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