Advertise with NZME.<\/a><\/p>\nPortugal superstar Cristiano Ronaldo can play in the opening matches of the 2026 World Cup after global football governing body Fifa gave him a partially \u201csuspended\u201d ban on Tuesday following a red card.<\/p>\n
\n The 40-year-old was sent off as Portugal lost 2-0 to Ireland in Dublin earlier in November when
\n he elbowed Dara O\u2019Shea in the back, for his first dismissal in 226 international appearances.\n <\/p>\n
Fifa banned Ronaldo for three matches, two of which will be suspended and the other has already been served, when Portugal sealed their qualification for next summer\u2019s tournament against Armenia.<\/p>\n
\u201cIn line with article 27 of the Fifa Disciplinary Code, the serving of the two remaining matches has been suspended under a one-year probation period,\u201d said Fifa in a statement given to AFP.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf Cristiano Ronaldo commits another infringement of a similar nature and gravity during the probationary period, the suspension set out in the disciplinary decision shall be deemed automatically revoked and the remaining two matches must be served immediately at the next official [Portugal] matches.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"AFP 25 Nov, 2025 05:53 PM2 mins to read Subscribe to listenAccess to Herald Premium articles require a…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":153861,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[2246,74,7800,10635,25598,54571,10542,36862,5504,5213,6637,1437,96407,13085,111,139,69,10521,43382,10538,25928,54572,29946,213,49519,18834,61,14578,377],"class_list":["post-153860","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-sports","tag-2246","tag-after","tag-body","tag-card","tag-cleared","tag-cristiano","tag-cup","tag-fifa","tag-following","tag-football","tag-gave","tag-global","tag-governing","tag-matches","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-nz","tag-opening","tag-partially","tag-play","tag-portugal","tag-ronaldo","tag-ruling","tag-sports","tag-superstar","tag-suspended","tag-to","tag-tuesday","tag-world"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/153860","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=153860"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/153860\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/153861"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=153860"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=153860"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=153860"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}