Ronaldo, Pjanic and the Role-Management Dilemma of an Icon in Portugal's National Team

There is a moment I watched three times before daring to write this line. It was in a Portugal match, when Cristiano Ronaldo was substituted in the 70th minute. He did not slap the dugout roof, did not shake his head at the coach. He simply walked to the touchline, head down, and sat on the bench staring straight into the empty space ahead. No jeers. No applause. Only the silence of a stadium trying to understand what had just happened to the man they once believed could not be replaced. That silence was not on the pitch. It was in the minds of the people who run football. Recently, Miralem Pjanic, who once played alongside Ronaldo at Juventus, spoke at a sports event in Toronto. He described the scenes around Ronaldo's call-up as "sad," and expressed hope for a satisfactory agreement between the player and the coaching staff. Pjanic blamed no one. He called it a difference of perspectives. It is the way he chose his words that deserves analysis. When an insider chooses to speak publicly about internal matters, the dressing-room door has usually been ajar for a long time. The context here is not a single match. It is a cycle. Portugal is entering a generational handover, as the cohort that shared Ronaldo's and Pepe's era gives way to a younger generation. Past thirty, Ronaldo remains the most mentioned name in the media, the face on every poster. But his role on the pitch is being quietly and deliberately narrowed. I have followed this process long enough to recognise a pattern. At national-team level, managing an ageing icon is not like managing one at club level. At a club, a coach can sell a player, can push him down to the reserves. With a national team, the coach is bound by something else: the memory of an entire nation. He is not merely managing a player. He is managing a legacy. Pjanic understands that better than most, having once shared a dressing room with Ronaldo. He recalls witnessing the demanding nature and competitive mentality of his former teammate. That is the source of his credibility on this subject. An outsider saying Ronaldo is difficult would be dismissed as sniping. An old friend saying it becomes an explanation. So where does the real problem lie? Portugal's national team has yet to shape a clear model for using Ronaldo. He is a player accustomed to starting every match, accustomed to being the centre of every move. The coaching staff want rotation, want to conserve energy for more important games. The two sides measure the same problem with two different rulers. The player measures in minutes played. The coach measures in the distance left in the whole tournament. This is where I must say plainly what few commentators dare to say. Portugal's problem is not that Ronaldo plays badly. The problem is that no one dares to define his new role decisively. I recall an afternoon in a Da Nang coffee shop, back when I was still absorbed in the counter-attacking numbers of the V-League. I learned one thing from counting every move: a team does not grow weaker when it loses its star. It grows weaker when it does not know who will do what in the position the star leaves behind. The gap itself does not kill the team. The ambiguity around that gap does. The strong attack with the ball; the clever attack with space. Here, the space is Ronaldo's role. No one states clearly how many matches he will still start, at what point in the tournament, with what task. When an icon does not know exactly where he stands in the plan, he goes looking for the answer himself by demanding more. That is not ego. It is the survival instinct of a man long used to standing at the centre. I once watched a coach settle this problem very cleanly. He did not call the veteran into a private room for a pep talk. He gave him a concrete number: you will start three of the five group matches, no more than 70 minutes each, and you start the semi-final if we get there. The player nodded. Not because he liked having his minutes capped. But because he knew exactly where he stood. Clarity soothes the ego faster than any praise. A line-up says nothing until the ball is lost. And in Portugal's national team, what the line-up is saying is hesitation. Ronaldo still plays, but is no longer the sole destination of every move. The young players still look for him, but they are also beginning to look for each other. That is the sign of a team in transition, and of a star being gradually eased away from the centre. There is another angle I want to bring in for comparison. The Japanese taught me patience. They build a team generation by generation, accepting ten years of waiting for a foundation. The Belgians taught me ruthlessness. They are willing to drop a star if that star no longer serves the style. The Japanese taught me patience; the Belgians taught me ruthlessness. Portugal stands between those two roads, and the hesitation shows clearly in every match. If I were Portugal's coach, I would not let this story drag on until just before a major tournament. I would pick a moment, perhaps right after a friendly, to announce Ronaldo's new role in a single, clear sentence, without praise attached. What is needed now is not celebration. It is a definition. Celebration can wait for the farewell. For now, the team needs to know who plays where. But this is where I want to go against the crowd. The popular way of telling this story turns Ronaldo into the victim of a ruthless system, or into a stubborn man refusing to step back. Both tellings are lazy. They overlook one simple reality: Ronaldo is not Portugal's problem. He is the mirror reflecting Portugal's problem. The real problem lies in the fact that the federation and the coaching staff have yet to build a dignified farewell plan, with a roadmap, with milestones, with a designated successor. They let everything run on inertia. They let the media ask the questions, let the fans argue, let a former teammate like Pjanic speak on behalf of the silence of those responsible. When an old friend has to say what the coaching staff should have said, the issue is no longer a player's role. It is a matter of governance. I have followed football for more than half a century. I have seen many stars leave in silence, and not a few leave in regret. What separates the two groups is not talent. It is whether someone sat down with them early, drew a clear roadmap, and said plainly: this is your final stretch, we want it to be beautiful. A dead ball on the pitch, yet intent lives in every metre of movement. In this story, the dead ball lies in the press conferences where no one dares to speak the truth. And the living intent lies in the way Pjanic chose each word, when he spoke of a satisfactory agreement. Agreement. Not affection. Not gratitude. An agreement. That is the language of people still negotiating, not of people who have already parted. When the next international window arrives, look at Portugal's bench in the 70th minute. If Ronaldo is still sitting there, eyes fixed on the empty space, then this story has no ending yet. But if he stands, applauds, and points to a young player coming on in his place, then perhaps someone has finally sat down and spoken honestly. Football does not need another grand farewell ceremony. It needs a coach brave enough to give a number, a deadline, and a promise that can be verified with the eyes.