Thursday night’s World Cup qualifier in Dublin<\/a>, which the hosts won 2-0.<\/p>\nRonaldo will definitely serve a one-match ban in Portugal’s final qualifier against Armenia on Sunday but could face a three-match suspension.<\/p>\n
FIFA’s disciplinary code states violent conduct should lead to a suspension of at least three matches, as should any offence of assault, including “elbowing, punching, kicking, biting, spitting at or hitting an opponent”.<\/p>\n
If they win their group, as still seems likely despite their defeat to the Boys in Green, a three-game ban would mean Ronaldo missing Portugal’s first two group games at the 2026 finals, which he confirmed earlier this week would “definitely” be his last.<\/p>\n
Portugal coach Roberto Martinez defended his skipper after the match, saying: “The red card is just a captain that has never been sent off before in 226 games – I think that just deserves credit – and today, I thought it was a bit harsh because he cares about the team.<\/p>\n
“He was 60 minutes or 58 minutes in the box being grabbed, being pulled, being pushed and obviously when he tries to get away from the defender…<\/p>\n
“I think the action looks worse than what it actually is, I don’t think it’s an elbow, I think it’s a full body, but from where the camera is, it looks like an elbow. But we accept it.<\/p>\n
“The only thing that leaves a bitter taste in my mouth is at the (pre-match) press conference, (the Ireland) coach (Heimir Hallgrimsson) was talking about the aspect of the referees being influenced, and then a big centre-half falls on the floor so dramatically at the turn of Cristiano’s body.”<\/p>\n
Watch Hungary v Republic of Ireland in World Cup qualifying on Sunday from 1.30pm on RT\u00c92 and the RT\u00c9 Player. Follow a live blog on the RT\u00c9 News App and on rte.ie\/sport. Listen to live commentary on RT\u00c9 Radio 1.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Cristiano Ronaldo could miss the opening two matches of next summer’s World Cup after his red card for…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":139630,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[42,43,40,38,41,39],"class_list":{"0":"post-139629","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-headlines","8":"tag-headlines","9":"tag-news","10":"tag-top-news","11":"tag-top-stories","12":"tag-topnews","13":"tag-topstories"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/139629","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=139629"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/139629\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/139630"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=139629"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=139629"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=139629"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}