Cristiano Ronaldo scores first World Cup knockout goal, substituted as VAR spike denies Croatia
Goncalo Ramos headed in a stoppage-time winner as Portugal beat Croatia 2-1 and kept alive Cristiano Ronaldo’s hopes of winning the World Cup. The late goal broke Croatian hearts in another knockout game packed with late drama.
The 41-year-old Ronaldo, a five-times Ballon d’Or winner and one of the game’s greatest players, was substituted on 80 minutes having scored his first knockout goal for his country. It was a big decision by Portugal coach Roberto Martinez but paid off when Ramos headed in Rafael Leao’s cross.
Portugal had the best chances of the first half with Bruno Fernandes seeing two shots blocked in quick succession and Ronaldo failing to get onto Pedro Neto’s cross.
The game erupted in the second half and it was Croatia who started stronger with Mateo Kovacic hitting the side netting before Ivan Perisic was allowed to take three touches to control the ball in the box and fire past Dominik Livakovic on 53 minutes.
Ronaldo thought he had scored his first World Cup knockout goal when he controlled a high ball and brilliantly flicked it over Livakovic only to be ruled offside but his big moment came soon after. Martinez made a quadruple change on the hour mark, leaving Ronaldo on, and from a corner Nikola Vlasic was judged to have brought down Renato Veiga off the ball after VAR intervention, with a penalty awarded to Portugal.
Ronaldo, playing in his ninth World Cup knockout game, scored from the spot on the 68th minute. A flurry of chances followed for both sides but seemingly to Ronaldo’s surprise he was substituted on 80 minutes, shaking hands with Martinez and his team-mates before sitting on the side of the dugout.
The last 32 had already seen two games settled on penalties and two by stoppage-time goals and that became three when Ramos headed in and was embraced by Ronaldo.
In a truly incredible finish, Josko Gvardiol thought he had equalised in the 103rd minute only for a VAR review — using a snick-o-meter to show the ball had brushed Igor Matanovic on the way through — to rule Mario Pasalic, who assisted Gvardiol, offside.
Portugal will now face Spain in Dallas on July 6.
Here The Athletic’s Jack Lang, Thom Harris and Matt Slater break down the game’s key talking points.
How did Ramos win it?
Goncalo Ramos is a strange player. He is clearly talented but also diffident, a bullfighter who seems to have little taste for blood. His previous big World Cup moment for Portugal — that superb hat-trick against Switzerland in Qatar — seemed set to propel his career to the next level. Instead, he’s spent much of the time since sat on Paris Saint-Germain’s bench.
For Portugal, it has been the same. He has never managed to make an unignorable case for himself, even as Ronaldo has declined. There was no real question of him being a starter under Roberto Martinez when this tournament began.
Ramos heads in the winner (Photo: Mattia Ozbot/Getty Images)
Will his goal here change that? It remains to be seen. What we can say is that Ramos grabbed his opportunity with both hands. He only had one sight of goal — not a clear one, either — and he made no mistake, planting his header into the corner of Livakovic’s net. If Portugal are to go all the way this summer, he has already written his name into the story.
“When you need a late goal, you can call Goncalo Ramos,” he said afterwards. “It’s important that we’re growing into the competition. We showed the strength of our group today. Portugal are never down and out.”
Jack Lang
Why did Croatia’s equaliser not count?
Croatia thought they had an equaliser, deep into additional time, when Josko Gvardiol bundled a finish home from close range. The goal was initially allowed to stand, but replays showed that Mario Pasalic, who passed to Gvardiol, was offside.
Simple as that? Not quite. Croatia thought that the goal should have stood because — in their view — Igor Matanovic, who had been jumping for a header in the middle prior to Pasalic’s intervention, had not touched the ball. Pasalic had been onside when the original cross, from the left side, was played.
The VAR, however, used the football equivalent of what is known in cricket as ‘snick-o-meter’, which signals whether a player (or a bat in cricket) has touched the ball, even if very lightly. There was a spike on the dial when the ball was next to Matanovic’s head. In other words, he had touched it. Pasalic was offside. And Croatia were heartbroken.
Jack Lang
How did Ronaldo score his first World Cup knockout goal?
After a first half of hopeful flicks and not much else, Ronaldo burst into life in the second. 60 minutes in, he had the ball in the net. Pedro Neto clipped a delightful pass over the Croatian backline for Ronaldo to run onto.
The veteran’s first touch was silky, redolent of Dennis Bergkamp. His second, a little nudged finish over the onrushing Dominik Livakovic, wasn’t bad either. But as he ran away to the corner, pointing at his own chest and leaping into the air, he noticed the raised flag of the assistant referee on the far side. The party was postponed.
Not for long, as it turned out. Nikola Vlasic wrestled Raphael Veiga to the floor, gifting Portugal a penalty. Ronaldo took a series of deep breathes, muttered something to himself, and dinked his kick right down the middle, into the space vacated by the diving Livakovic.
It was, on the one hand, a completely unremarkable moment. Ronaldo has scored countless penalties across his career. This, though, was a personal milestone: Ronaldo’s first goal in a World Cup knockout game, at the ninth time of asking. His celebration suggested he knew it, too.
Ronaldo celebrates his first knockout goal (Photo: Cole Burston / AFP via Getty Images)
Jack Lang
How did Ronaldo react to being substituted?
In the chaotic aftermath of a second disallowed Croatia goal, a momentous change. Though no-one was to know at the time, this could well have been the unceremonious end of Cristiano Ronaldo on the international stage.
No player has made more appearances for their country in the history of the game. And barely 15 minutes after he, finally, scored his maiden knockout goal at a World Cup, he could not hide his disappointment at seeing his number raised.
Ronaldo is substituted (Getty Images)
He grimaced, looked to the skies and rolled his eyes, trudged towards the touchline with his head down before suddenly seeming to remember that team spirit thing he had going on in the Group Stage and giving Ruben Neves a reluctant high-five. He continued to shake his head as he high-fived teammates on the bench, clearly emotional at the thought of his Portugal career coming to an end.
The relief was palpable as Ramos rose highest to flick an incredible header past Dominik Livakovic and into the far corner. Ronaldo ran to give his No 9 an extra hug on the touchline as the celebrations wound down.
Ronaldo sits by the dugout (Getty Images)
We will be seeing more of one of football’s greats on the biggest stage, but sadly losing another in Luka Modric on his 201st Croatia cap. But after the most dramatic of disallowed goals at the death, it was a lot closer than Ronaldo would have liked.
Thom Harris
How are these guys still going?
Elite sport is meant to be no country for old men, right?
It did not feel that way in Toronto, where most of the pre-match focus had been on the battle of quadragenarians, you know who and Luka Modric.
It seems that most of the Portugal defence’s focus was elsewhere, too, when Croatia right-back Josep Stanisic made a fine overlapping run and dug out a decent cross.
With Ruben Dias and Renato Viega manhandling Igor Matanovic and Nikola Vlasic, all looked well….hold on, who is this spritely chicken popping up at the back stick? I recognise him!
Yes, it was Ivan Perisic, 37 years young, taking two touches to control it, before slotting a hard, low shot past Diogo Costa to give Croatia the lead.
I don’t know why we were all surprised, he has been doing this for his country since 2011. This was his 39th goal in his 158th game for Croatia.
During that time, he has scored World Cup goals against Cameroon, Mexico, Iceland, France, Japan and now Portugal.
Am I forgetting one? Oh, yeah, there was also that equaliser against England in the semi-final in 2018, which he immediately followed up with the assist for Mario Mandzukic’s winner.
He has also scored 167 goals in 688 club appearances for a stellar cast of clubs that include Dortmund, Bayern Munich, Inter and now PSV.
Am I forgetting something? Oh yes, the exception to the Perisic rule. His bad-tempered and bang average stint with Tottenham, for whom he scored only once in 50 games.
What on earth happened there? The guy is lethal.
Matt Slater
What is Ronaldo’s World Cup record?
Ronaldo’s goal was his 11th at the World Cup, making him the 11th man to score more than 10 times in the competition.
More pertinently though, was the fact that it was the first time he had scored in the knockout stage of the competition; in what was his ninth such game. Curiously, his great rival Lionel Messi also scored his first World Cup knockout goal at the ninth attempt (against Australia in 2022).
The goal was Ronaldo’s 146th overall for Portugal, which is incredibly now more than he registered for Manchester United.
Ronaldo has now scored 16 per cent of the World Cup goals in Portugal’s history (11 of 69), a remarkable figure which is testament to his greatness.
On top of these 11 World Cup goals he has also scored 14 times at the European Championship, making him the only European man to have scored 25 times across the two competitions.
How did Croatia get back in the game?
Despite the damning statistics at half-time — just 31 per cent of the ball, outshot nine to three — Croatia were well in this game as the second half began. They were well-organised, energetic and dynamic in midfield, and sprung forward with conviction on the counter-attack, only failing to create more clear-cut opportunities for themselves due to some poor decision-making and dithering on the ball.
Zlatko Dalic was proactive at half-time and withdrew centre-forward Ante Budimir. He is a talismanic figure for La Liga side Osasuna, scoring 57 league goals in three seasons for the Spanish side, but he struggled to impose himself on the game, a little static in his off-ball movement. On came Igor Matanovic, whose aggression and physicality added a new dimension to the Croatian attack.
Straight away, the 23-year-old launched himself into the game, making a number of stomping runs in-behind and crashing into challenges. It gave Portugal’s centre-backs plenty to think about, and it was his leap to meet Josip Stanisic’s cross that threw Ruben Dias off-balance in the build-up to his side’s opening goal.
Croatia were only more dangerous as the game wore on, scoring two disallowed goals — the second after another series of surging movements to stretch the defence.
It was ultimately not enough as the tiniest of margins denied Croatia, but Matanovic changed the game.
Thom Harris
Have Portugal found the right formula down the left?
Portugal left-back Nuno Mendes has worked with three different wingers this tournament, but today’s showing with Rafael Leao will surely be enough to convince Roberto Martinez that this is the most effective combination.
Both were constantly ambitious down the flank, a pacey partnership that first showed its frightening potential after just three minutes, as Mendes weighed a perfect pass down the flank for Leao to chase. Moments later, the full-back made a darting underlapping run to create space for his winger to receive a cross-field ball, the kind of understanding that makes wing-play tick.
Mendes only cemented his status as one of the world’s most complete full-backs with a number of eye-catching contributions in the first half, not least as he picked out a remarkable switch of play to find Joao Cancelo on the opposite flank. The two linked again after the break, as Mendes slipped a neat ball inside to Leao, who chopped inside and struck a dipping shot off the crossbar.
It was looking as though it might be a game of nearly-moments before Leao popped up with the crucial assist, spinning a teasing cross into the area for Ramos to head home. But even if their efforts had gone without reward, this was an exciting glimpse as to what two of the quickest, strongest and most technically gifted wide players can do with space to combine.
Thom Harris
Was Toronto a good World Cup venue?
It began on June 12, a sunny Toronto day, as red and white flares filled the downtown corridor as Canadian supporters marched to BMO Field, witnessing the country’s first ever World Cup match on home soil. It ended with a scorcher as Portuguese and Croatian supporters delivered raucous atmospheres in 40 degree heat from the pep rally to the marches. Oh and that match was memorable as well.
Coming into the tournament, there were legitimate concerns about Toronto as a World Cup host. Would people care on match days? Would the stadium be full? Could the temporary seating sustain the number of people?
Gauging from the fan marches, the diasporas of the different countries cared deeply. The gatherings were communal experiences for people to sing, dance, and cheer. The downtown streets filling up with supporters created viral moments that Toronto hasn’t experienced before.
As for BMO Field, there were criticisms about its small size. But speaking to fans, there was an appreciation for its intimate atmosphere. The sight lines were fantastic and the sound was contained, making it loud for all six matches. As for the temporary seating, it held up just fine, despite all the jumping.
If you were to judge the fan experience on match days, Toronto passed the test.
Lukas Weese