Cristiano Ronaldo weighed ending his Portugal career after the World Cup and acknowledged Wednesday some critics at home want him out of the team.<\/p>\n
The 41-year-old Ronaldo was confirmed by coach Jorge Jesus as a starter for this 234th Portugal game \u2014 on Thursday against Wales in the Nations League.<\/p>\n
Asked at a pre-game news conference if he thought of stopping his international career in July, after Portugal’s round-of-16 loss to Spain, Ronaldo said: “Yes, I did. Of course, I\u2019m always thinking on my decisions, my future, the present also.”<\/p>\n
“I had a conversation with our president, with our coach,” he said of Jesus, whose previous job was leading Ronaldo\u2019s club Al-Nassr to the Saudi league title in May. “I still believe that I\u2019m able to help the national team to reach what they want, and will finish when I feel like I\u2019m not doing anything here.”<\/p>\n
Ronaldo, who captained Portugal to the previous Nations League title in 2025, is closing in on 1,000 career goals.<\/p>\n
“One thousand goals, yes, and the national team. Winning the Nations League, the competition starts tomorrow,” Ronaldo said. “This is a new young generation,” he said. “But for me the basic point is to be able on the pitch to score the goals and to help the team win games.”<\/p>\n
The superstar player is not universally still admired in his home country.<\/p>\n
“I feel the Portuguese fans like me, but I do understand that some TV channels want to criticize me,” he said. “They are dying for me not to come to the national team anymore, but I can still move away from it.<\/p>\n
“Anyway, I am used to it. For over 20 years I have been doing this, but my memories are with people who love me. I know why young kids love Cristiano, because they see me as an example, and I will continue to do that. Even when I am retired \u2026 in 10 years,” Ronaldo said, smiling.<\/p>\n
The Associated Press contributed to this report.<\/i><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
BROWSE BY Cristiano Ronaldo weighed ending his Portugal career after the World Cup and acknowledged Wednesday some critics at home want him out of the team. The 41-year-old Ronaldo was confirmed by coach Jorge Jesus as a starter for this 234th Portugal game \u2014 on Thursday against Wales in the Nations League. Asked at a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":7352,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[29],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7353","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-soccer"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/play-live.eu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7353","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/play-live.eu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/play-live.eu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/play-live.eu\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=7353"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/play-live.eu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7353\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/play-live.eu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/7352"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/play-live.eu\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=7353"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/play-live.eu\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=7353"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/play-live.eu\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=7353"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}