Houston \/ Tuesday, 23 June \/ 18:00<\/p>\n
I am at this game for Radio 5 Live too and let’s just say I will be keeping a close eye on Cristiano Ronaldo. <\/p>\n
Portugal are such an interesting team. I covered them in their draw against DR Congo and they have the best midfielders in the tournament, but they also have Ronaldo up front.<\/p>\n
That used to be a huge positive, but now it is a problem.<\/p>\n
You would put Ronaldo up with the world’s all-time greats when he was at his peak, but he is not the same player now.<\/p>\n
He killed Portugal against DR Congo and it was like they were playing with a man down.<\/p>\n
What I found staggering was that Portugal boss Roberto Martinez must have seen that – everyone else did – but did not take him off.<\/p>\n
Ronaldo was world class and was once one of the game’s great goalscorers, but he cannot run or even move anymore.<\/p>\n
I want to make it clear I am not criticising the player Ronaldo was, not in any way, but I also think he just should not be playing for Portugal anymore.<\/p>\n
I don’t see Martinez dropping Ronaldo for this game, though. His influence is far too great.<\/p>\n
I still think Portugal will beat Uzbekistan, who were very open against Colombia, because they have got superior footballers – but if they do win, it will be despite Ronaldo, not because of him.<\/p>\n
Sutton’s prediction: 3-0<\/p>\n
AI’s prediction: 3-0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Houston \/ Tuesday, 23 June \/ 18:00 I am at this game for Radio 5 Live too and…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":646446,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[33],"tags":[218,101,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-646445","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-football","tag-football","tag-sports","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/646445","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=646445"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/646445\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/646446"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=646445"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=646445"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=646445"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}