Why Euro 2016 Final Could See Nani Emerge from Cristiano Ronaldo's Shadow

Even if all the previews will focus on one individual for Portugal, they had a pair of players who scored two crucial goals in the group stages and one in the semi-finals against Wales. Although all of the Portuguese buildup to the Euro 2016 final is focusing on Cristiano Ronaldo, remember to make room for Nani.

Largely impressive at this tournament, the winger, now at the ripe old age of 29—where has the time gone?—has had a strange sort of career and one that seems to have been tainted by association.

He’s never going to be the first name on your lips when you’re asked to name a Portuguese footballer with more than 100 caps who has played for both Sporting Lisbon and Manchester United, and in a very real way that comparison to Ronaldo is one he’s never been allowed to unshackle himself from.

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He hasn’t helped himself along the way, but as Nani enters the Euro 2016 final as a key player for his country, is his career one that deserves to be re-evaluated?

Valencia certainly think so, given they’ve already snapped him up for the next three La Liga seasons, and in Paris on Sunday, France will have to keep a close eye on a roving menace whose success at Euro 2016 has largely centred on his willingness to gamble.

All three of his goals at the tournament—against Iceland, Hungary and Wales—came from anticipation about where the ball would drop in the penalty area, and that trait is surely to be commended given that Nani has spent much of his career being criticised for a lack of awareness or for being too determined to go it alone.

It must not have been easy for him when, aged just 20 and having had two seasons in the Sporting Lisbon team, he pitched up at Manchester United in 2007 with everyone expecting the second coming of Ronaldo. After a couple of injury-hit years, it isn’t surprising that his best form came after his international captain had moved to Real Madrid in 2009.

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Clearly admired by both colleagues and opposition, he was voted as United’s Players’ Player of the Year in the 2010/11 season, a campaign in which he also found a place in the Professional Footballers’ Association team of the year, too.

He played 49 times in that season, winning the third of four Premier League winners’ medals he has to his name, and then he followed that up with 40 more appearances the following year, something that obviously indicated he had the trust of Sir Alex Ferguson. After all, you don’t play 230 games for Manchester United if you aren’t any good.

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It’s just, well, he was Nani.

He seemed to come with a health warning that meant he was never going to be universally loved.

Whereas Ronaldo could do things with a football no other human being bar one could, his compatriot would often leave United supporters frustrated, elated and irritated on the same afternoon.

There was a sense that at the stage where he should have been maturing as a player, he was still that raw 20-year-old—fantastic on his day but also just as likely to spend matches sitting on his backside.

All of which made David Moyes’ decision to reward him with a five-year contract during his first few weeks as United boss in 2013 all the more puzzling, and Nani would play just 14 more times for the club after that.

Perhaps the bumper nature of his new deal had something to do with it, but he’d become lazy and injury-prone, and a career that, at one stage, looked as though it could have taken him to an even greater stage than United started to peter out.

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Sporting were willing to take him back into their flock on a loan deal, and then he moved on to Fenerbahce, but his displays in France and now his move to Valencia indicate that the penny might just have dropped for a fantastically talented footballer who seemed to be too obsessed with the fringes of matches to make sustained impacts upon them.

Nani has long been regarded as a fallen talent or that figure of fun at whom Ronaldo would shoot daggers when a pass went astray or a lazy run led to him being caught offside.

Yet here he is on a par with his national captain at this tournament in terms of goals, and if Portugal are to shock France and become European champions, then he is going to have a large say in that.

He might not ever come out of Ronaldo’s shadow because few do, but on Sunday night he might just get some to re-evaluate a curious career that still has more to come.