Portugal vs Austria match report: Cristiano Ronaldo could do no more - but it still was not enough

Portugal 0 Austria 0: Real Madrid man becomes his nation’s most capped player, but late penalty miss takes edge off fine performance

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He was inconsolable when the game’s single moment of monumental theatre had come and gone, despite the attempts of lesser mortals to see him right. Luis Nani held out two palms in sympathy but Cristiano Ronaldo didn’t want the gesture. He just shoved him away.

If a footballing justice had prevailed then the penalty kick Ronaldo had just watched bounce off the left hand upright and away would have slipped into the net because it was awarded when the Austrian defender Martin Hinteregger, whose performance in deterring him had otherwise been immense, resorted to rugby tackling him to the ground. But the margins in football can be small, and they recede even further when a team is so totally dependent on one individual as Portugal is on him.

Though another desperately disappointing draw from a group which should have been a cake-walk for his nation builds no little tension into the final fixture, with Hungary, the message for all the rest is that spirit is certainly moving Ronaldo. He closed his eyes and waved his arm around in what looked like an out-of-body experience when the anthem sounded and he left no stone unturned here, from the walk out for the second half in deep conversation with the referee, to a full display of his repertoire. He could have done no more.


 Ronaldo misses from the spot against Austria 
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Read his comments about the Icelanders how you want – a spiteful impoverishment of spirit and fair play, or alternatively the most transparent sign of what Gary Neville once called his nastiness: no quarter given as he looks for the weak link in an opponent and then stalks such an individual until the job is done. His fitness is contributing to the intensity - he knew that he lacked it at the last World Cup – and perhaps a sense of himself as the history man. Ronaldo moved past Luis Figo as his nation’s most capped player with his 128th appearance here.

Yet the problem when the pre-match rituals were done was a defence which made Austria’s presence in the top ten of world football’s rankings a little less ridiculous than it sounds. There were shadows wherever he went in his search for pockets of space – up and down the front line and into the hole – and he just could not shake them.

Austria tried to bully him before he could bully them, doubling up on the Portugal right where Marcel Sabitzer put in a ‘welcome to Paris’ tackle, and then Hinteregger, the centre half, took up the challenge in a monumental way. ‘Best defensive contribution to a match’ is rarely the prize discussed when tournaments are finished. If it had not been for the rugby demonstration, this one would be up there.

Interventions came before the ball was even his – Stefan Ilsanker, reaching in front of Ronaldo to prevent him taking it back to goal. Rare are defensive performances of such combined technical excellence. The Austria goalkeeper Robert Almer, man of the match, contributed to it substantially and the game was nearly half an hour old before Ronaldo even won a foul.

The marginal opportunities have to be taken when this is what you are up against. The game was nearing its half-hour mark when some clever triangulation down the left saw Nani release Raphael Guerreiro to pull back for Ronaldo, who tried to spin a shot off his right instep. The ball screwed five inches wide and he screamed into the black night sky. The left foot had actually looked the more obvious option.

It was a decent demonstration of Portuguese assets: no more than that. This side implicitly feels old – with no tangible sign of the ‘next Ronaldo’. That said, the selection of Ricardo Quaresma was a gamble that generally worked and chances came.

Nani’s shot was well blocked by Almer with his foot after he had nipped past Sebastian Prodl, the Watford defender called up because of Aleksandar Dragovic’s red card suspension. Nani also headed powerfully against the left post five minutes later from an Andre Gomes cross.


 Portugal defender Pepe shows his frustration 
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Austria were just resigned to soaking up all this – hoping, it looked, to take a point and then beat Iceland. Vieirinha cleared an in-swinging corner off the line. There was otherwise nothing to offer from them.

The frustration mounted soon after the interval when two more efforts from the man around whom the whole night so manifestly hinged were repelled. A left foot shot from 30 yards brought a save of the highest order from Almer, leaping to his left to palm away with a strong hand. Ronaldo’s leap to meet a corner four minutes later put him fully a foot above any defender and his header of immense power bounced in front of the goalkeeper, who again shoved it away.

Hinteregger threw himself at the ball as Ronaldo tried to execute a bicycle kick and won a free kick. And when the night’s protagonist appeared to finally found the net, minutes after the penalty, he was standing two yards offside. He was as dis-interested in the opposition at the end as he had been after the Iceland draw, but they are certainly interested in him. And therein lies the Portuguese problem.

Portugal (4-2-3-1) Rui Patricio; Vieirinha, Pepe, R Carvalho, Raphael Gerreiro; William Carvalho, Andre Gomes, Quaresma, Joao Moutinho, Nani; Ronaldo

Austria (4-2-3-1) Almer; Klein, Prodl, Hinteregger, Fuchs; Sabitzer, Alaba, Arnautovic; Harnik

Referee N. Rizzoli (Italy)