Rant—The Denmark Portugal Result: C.Ronaldo Has No Blame?

"Cristiano Ronaldo has managed to conquer everything, INDIVIDUALLY"

"HE proved Sir Alex right and went on to LEAD United to English dominance"

(In reference to Portugal's match against Denmark) "Before blaming Ronaldo for the unsuccessful campaigns, why don't you blame (other) players?"

- Jose V. Rodrigues, in his article http://bleacherreport.com/articles/249578-cristiano-ronaldo-if-god-cant-please-anyone-i-wont-either/show_full

Ronaldo fans love to have it both ways, don't they.

For them, when things are going well for the team he's playing for all credit goes to Ronaldo—"HE's the best player in the world," and "HE LED them to success."

Nada about the quality of his teammates.

But when things aren't going so well, all of a sudden he has no responsibility for the result and it changes to: "Blame the other players, it's their fault not his."

Hold on. What happened to HIS ability to "lead" teams to victory? I thought HE was "the best player in the world." As "the best player in the world", isn't he supposed to make the difference? How about just A difference? Did HE even have a good game?

One of Ronaldo fans' favourite argument for Ronaldo is that he has an all round game—free kicks, headers, long shots etc—and so he can score from anywhere. That's what makes him so dangerous, apparently.

Well what's been conveniently neglected is the fact out of the 32 shots that Portugal "failed to convert" against Denmark, Ronaldo was the one who failed to convert 12 of them. That's 40% of Portugal's chances!

May I suggest that the real reason he's dangerous is simply because of the sheer number of shots he takes, rather than the quality of them?

Back about six months ago, Portgual played Sweden in another must-win game, where again Ronaldo was expected to produce. Typically, he didn't. I wrote an article about it, detailing his history of failing to produce, and asked the question: "Is anybody REALLY surprised?"

For me, the answer is still a big fat no.

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