Billed as the last dance for two footballing icons, it was Croatia\u2019s Luka Modri\u0107<\/a> who, at the age of 40, had to leave what will surely be his final World Cup. Cristiano Ronaldo<\/a>, meanwhile, plays on, and scored and was even substituted in a match of endless incident. But this was a contest about more than two individuals, who were far from the most influential players on show, even if Ronaldo was bewilderingly named player of the match. Instead this was an old-fashioned World Cup battle between hardened teams, with momentum swinging first one way then the other then back again. It was also a match stuffed with incident, including \u2013 for the first time in World Cup history \u2013 a total of four disallowed goals, one of them denying Croatia an equaliser in the very last second of the match.<\/p>\n After a sweltering day in Toronto, the evening brought welcome cool and the atmosphere inside the stadium was voluble throughout. The first half was largely dominated by Portugal, who should surely have taken a lead into the break. Their first chance came eight minutes in when Le\u00e3o barrelled his way down the left and cut back low to Bruno Fernandes, who got off two shots: the first saved well by Dominik Livakovi\u0107, the second blocked by an onrushing defence.<\/p>\n Pedro Neto was Portugal\u2019s most persistent threat in the opening period. Dominant in his duel with Ivan Peri\u0161i\u0107, who was again playing full-back for Croatia, Neto was able to create enough space for himself to send a succession of whipped crosses into the box, every single one of which was both tempting and unsuccessful. Livakovi\u0107 came out for one and missed, but the ball eluded Ronaldo. Another cross on the half-hour had both Ronaldo and Fernandes stretching to meet it at the far post, but they were just too late to make contact.<\/p>\n Croatia would have been happy with how the first half panned out. They were on the back foot, but they were not uncertain. They stood up confidently to the waves of attacks, were robust in the middle of the park and had a plan of attack that looked to isolate Martin Baturina against Jo\u00e3o Cancelo and whip their own balls into the box for the hulking Ante Budimir to attack. It wasn\u2019t overly successful, perhaps in part due to the physical attentions of R\u00faben Dias, who was wrestling Budimir to the ground in quiet moments.<\/p>\n Zlatko Dali\u0107 removed Budimir at half-time, for the equally strapping Igor Matanovi\u0107, and the mood changed almost immediately. Suddenly it was Croatia on the front foot, while the intensity dropped from Portugal\u2019s play. Eight minutes in and Croatia had the lead, from precisely the area of the pitch where Portugal had caused so much trouble earlier. It was Josep Stani\u0161i\u0107 with the cross this time, whipped in from the right and again eluding everyone until, hidden at the back post, Peri\u0161i\u0107 emerged to get the ball under control on the turn and drive it back low past Diogo Costa.<\/p>\n From there Croatia went on a brief rampage. Petar Su\u010di\u0107 found Matanovi\u0107 in the box and the striker fired past Costa unerringly, only for the offside flag to go up belatedly. In the 59th minute Su\u010di\u0107 did the damage himself, cutting into the box from the left side and hitting a strong shot that Costa saved with his legs.<\/p>\n In between all that Le\u00e3o had crashed a 25-yard effort off the Croatian bar, and Ronaldo had seen a goal ruled out for offside, so all was hardly lost. But Livakovi\u0107 then gave Portugal assistance they hardly needed when he looked to take a few touches on the ball after a back-pass, and inadvertently put it behind for a corner. The corner was sent over and cleared, but there was vast animation on the Portugal bench as they desperately called for VAR to intervene, a move supported lustily by the crowd. The check took place, the Norwegian referee Espen Eskas was sent to the monitor, and Vlasic was spotted to have had an arm wrapped around Le\u00e3o as the cross came over. This, it was adjudged, was a penalty offence.<\/p>\n What happened next was what so much of the crowd, and especially Toronto\u2019s Portuguese community, had turned up to see. Ronaldo hung away from the melee until the penalty was confirmed, then began his march to the spot. He framed himself around the ball, he performed all the necessary rituals, he stepped up, sat Livakovi\u0107 down and converted. He ran to the corner as the ground exploded, performed his trademark celebration and the crowd \u2018siuuuuued\u2019 back to him.<\/p>\n Portugal were back in the game, but not much had changed in the overall dynamic. It was now Croatia who were clearly superior and should have scored again more than once after the hydration break. Mateo Kovacic had two long range efforts in succession saved. Matanovic saw a smart shot at the near post well saved. Sucic had another goal ruled out for offside. Ronaldo, meanwhile, was substituted off for R\u00faben Neves, an almost unprecedented act that surely betrayed how Roberto Mart\u00ednez was reading proceedings.<\/p>\n The change was effective. Portugal closed the spaces available on the counterattack and began to dominate the ball once more in the final knockings. Time and again, the play was directed to Leao, almost as if demanding he make a determining contribution. He did and the celebrations for the goal were so long that the referee added three minutes extra off added time. Croatia scored again in the last of these, but again \u2013 for the fourth time in the match \u2013 Josko Gvardiol\u2019s goal was ruled out for offside by VAR. An avalanche of plastic bottles were hurled on to the pitch in protest at the decision, but could not affect the outcome. <\/p>\n Later, in Vancouver, Switzerland beat Algeria 2-0 thanks to goals by Breel Embolo and Dan Ndoye. \u2013 Guardian <\/p>\n World Cup Wallchart<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Round of 32: Portugal 2 (Ronaldo pen 68, Ramos 90+4) Croatia 1 (Perisic 53) Rafael Le\u00e3o dropped to…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":530809,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[15561,62714,2956,61,60,2888,112,4018],"class_list":["post-530808","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-sports","tag-cristiano-ronaldo","tag-croatia","tag-fifa","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-portugal","tag-sports","tag-world-cup"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/530808","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=530808"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/530808\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/530809"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=530808"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=530808"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=530808"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"Cristiano](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/ME3EYJZXCONGWA7Z7O442T2FWA.jpg\")
Cristiano Ronaldo was substituted by Roberto Martinez before Portugal clinched victory over Croatia at the World Cup. Photograph: Dan Mullan\/Getty Images <\/p>\n