Cristiano Ronaldo has won everything in club football and a European Championship — but never this. At a record sixth World Cup, 41 years old and leading the reigning Nations League champions, he has one tournament left to claim the prize that has eluded a glittering generation. If Portugal win, he lifts it older than any captain ever has.
The symmetry is irresistible: the shared last dance with Messi, the two careers that organised an entire era of football, arriving at the same finish line. Messi already has his star; Ronaldo's is the unfinished sentence at the end of an otherwise complete story.
Portugal have the squad — Martínez's deep, PSG-cored 26 — and a soft group to build belief. The question is whether a 41-year-old is the spearhead or the symbol, and for Portugal and fantasy managers alike that is the same debate.
Greatness is rarely allowed a perfect ending. Ronaldo has one summer to argue otherwise.
Lift it and he rewrites the record books one last time; fall short and the golden generation's great gap stays unfilled.
Sources: FIFA — Portugal squad · Al Jazeera — Portugal preview.