Not even finishing Portugal’s perfect qualifying campaign as second-top scorer to Belgium’s Romelu Lukaku with 10 goals and as the country’s third-most used player with 725 minutes, only behind Ruben Dias and Bruno Fernandes, has proved enough for Ronaldo to put the debate to bed.
It certainly does not help that the only game he missed during the Euro qualifiers – a 9-0 win over Luxembourg – is rated as the greatest of the Martinez era so far.
The Spanish boss has refused, however, to enter the discussion about the situation of the Al-Nassr forward, claiming instead that Portugal are “prepared to win without him”.
Of the three preparation games for the Euros, Ronaldo only took part in Tuesday’s win over Republic of Ireland and he received some praise, not only for his brace but also for a more team-player attitude on the pitch.
He said following the 3-0 win over Ireland that, “regardless of whether I play or not, I’ll respect the coach’s decisions.”
“Honestly, I believe that his impact would be much bigger coming from the bench,” Oliveira said.
“And I don’t refer only to his goals and assists because we all know he’s capable of scoring against the likes of the Czech Republic and Georgia. I mean his overall performance because what we’ve seen plenty of times is Ronaldo playing as many minutes as possible and ultimately finding the net, but, if we look at his exhibitions in detail, the number of his negative actions was higher than the positive ones.”
Portugal’s most traditional sports newspaper A Bola has even hinted that the wrong question is being posed to Martinez.
Instead of whether the Euro 2016 winners play better without their captain, it argues it should be: “When is the right time for the normality of this team to be the absence of Ronaldo and not his presence?”