There is a particular noise that builds around Cristiano Ronaldo whenever he goes a couple of games without a goal, and it had been loud since the weekend. The 1-1 draw with DR Congo set it off. He barely touched the ball, Portugal looked blunt through the middle, and in the days after it a fair chunk of the Portuguese press had talked themselves into the idea that Roberto Martínez should leave him out against Uzbekistan. Six minutes in, Ronaldo dealt with that. He scored again before half time, Portugal won 5–0, and at 41 he had done something no footballer, man or woman, had managed before. Every minute of it was on free-to-air in the UK, and if you want the rest of Portugal’s run without paying for it, here is how to watch the World Cup for free in the UK.
Ronaldo’s six World Cups, and the Messi gap
Lay the list out and it looks faintly ridiculous. It started with a penalty against Iran in 2006. He was only 21 then, still basically a winger and a long way off the player he became. Four years on he scored against North Korea in South Africa. In 2014 he was half-fit in Brazil and got on the end of one against Ghana regardless. Then Russia in 2018, the proper one, four goals and that hat-trick against Spain on the opening night. A penalty against Ghana again in 2022. And now Uzbekistan, two decades on from the first.
That Iran penalty, by the way, made him the youngest Portugal player ever to score at a World Cup, 21 years and 132 days old. Twenty years later he is the second-oldest man to score at one, anywhere, in any era. The same name sits at both ends of that.
Messi is the obvious comparison, and he gets close. Six World Cups played, the only other man to manage it. But in 2010, in South Africa with Maradona in charge, he did not score in a single one of Argentina’s games. That one summer is the entire difference. Messi has scored at five.
The night the doubt looked silly
Here is the thing about the drop-him argument. It was not stupid. Ronaldo had been quiet against DR Congo, Portugal had looked short of ideas, and there is a reasonable case that a 41-year-old should not start every game of a month-long tournament in the American summer. Then João Cancelo whipped a cross in and Ronaldo got there first, drilling it past the goalkeeper before he could so much as crouch. The second was lovelier. A Bruno Fernandes through ball, the centre-backs caught flat, and Ronaldo in behind them before anyone reacted. The two of them did that to defences for years at United. Anyone still arguing for the bench at kick-off had gone quiet by half time.
The numbers behind the milestone
The age stuff is where it gets strange. He is 41. Only one man has scored at a World Cup older than that, Roger Milla, who was 42 doing it for Cameroon in 1994. The brace came with a second age record stapled to it: oldest player to score twice in a single World Cup game. Messi had set that one himself, only days earlier. Ronaldo took it straight back. One more for the pile: when he lined up opposite Uzbekistan’s 18-year-old Bekhruz Karimov, the 22-year gap between them was the biggest between two starters in any World Cup match there has ever been.
His second goal carried more than his first. Eusébio’s nine had stood as the Portugal World Cup record since 1966. Ronaldo drew level with his first goal and went past with his second, on to ten. The same strike pushed his international total to 145. Messi sits second on that list, 23 back. Later on Nuno Mendes bent in a free kick, only the second time a Portugal player has scored one direct at a World Cup. The first was Ronaldo, against Spain, in 2018.
Where it leaves him against Messi
For all that, this is one record among several, and not the one that settles the argument. Ronaldo leads on tournaments scored at, six to five. Messi is miles ahead on World Cup goals, 18 to 10, having passed Miroslav Klose earlier in this tournament to become the competition’s all-time leading scorer. Both are records. Neither cancels the other out, whatever anyone tells you. People will reach for whichever one suits the argument they were always going to make, which is roughly how the whole Ronaldo and Messi business has gone for 15 years.
What it means for Portugal
For Martínez, the win was the easy part. Portugal are top of Group K, a point clear of Colombia, and a forward line that looked stale four days earlier carved Uzbekistan open again and again. Mendes got his free kick, an own goal made it four, and Rafael Leão hammered home a loose ball late to finish things off. Five goals, none conceded, the captain back among them. On a Tuesday in the group stage, that is about as good as it gets. Colombia are next for them, and the third-place permutations across the 16 groups are already getting messy, all of which we are tracking through our World Cup 2026 coverage.
The knockouts will ask harder questions. Defences get organised, the space Ronaldo found tonight stops opening up, and the doubt that has shadowed Portugal through every tournament of his career drifts back in. He has the appearance record and the goal record and now this one, and not a single one of them is the trophy he has never lifted. So how much does a 41-year-old have left for the part of a World Cup where nobody gives him a yard?
