![\"FBL-EUR-NATIONS-NOR-DEN\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/GettyImages-2296295232.jpg\")
Getty ImagesPortugal benefit from a bad blunder by Norway’s goalkeeper<\/p>\nAgainst Norway, Cristiano Ronaldo sits on the bench for the full 90 minutes. Afterwards, he refuses to go over to the fans.<\/p>\n
While all of the Portuguese superstar’s team-mates made their way over to the roughly 500 travelling fans after the 2-1 win on matchday two of the Nations League against Norway to thank them for their support, Ronaldo headed straight down the tunnel after the final whistle.<\/p>\n
Before that, Ronaldo had spent the entire game on the bench. For the first time in more than 18 years, since the 2-0 defeat to Switzerland at Euro 2008, the 41-year-old did not play a single minute of a competitive match for Portugal.<\/p>\n
After the game, national coach Jorge Jesus explained that he had planned to bring Ronaldo on, but the circumstances and the narrow scoreline ruled out introducing another striker.<\/p>\n
“My plan was to use him in the second half, but the course of the game dictated otherwise. It made no sense to bring on a striker with his attributes,” Jesus explained his thinking.<\/p>\n
However, the Portugal coach could not understand the obvious frustration of his superstar. “Why didn’t he thank the fans? You’ll have to ask him that yourselves. I can’t read his thoughts, but I will know when I speak to him.”<\/p>\n
Getty ImagesPortugal benefit from a bad blunder by Norway’s goalkeeper<\/p>\n
In Oslo at the Ullevaal Stadion, Portugal went ahead on Sunday evening in the 17th minute through a long-range strike from Joao Felix.<\/p>\n
Norway had pushed hard in the first half and created the better chances, but Erling Haaland reacted quickest shortly after the break. Portugal goalkeeper Diogo Costa could only push a free-kick from Martin \u00d6degaard straight out, and the Manchester City striker tucked away the rebound.<\/p>\n
Portugal hit back quickly because Norway goalkeeper \u00d6rjan Nyland then made a bad blunder of his own. In the build-up, Nyland played the ball straight to Ramos, who beat the keeper in style with a lob from around 20 metres.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Against Norway, Cristiano Ronaldo sits on the bench for the full 90 minutes. Afterwards, he refuses to go…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":638356,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[108697,61,60,298,271191,2888,112,271190],"class_list":["post-638355","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-sports","tag-c-ronaldo","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-norway","tag-norway-vs-portugal","tag-portugal","tag-sports","tag-uefa-nations-league-a"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/638355","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=638355"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/638355\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/638356"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=638355"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=638355"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=638355"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}