TAKE A GOOD 5 MINUTES 👇
“As I had promised, I decided to recount myself, and in a direct manner, the circumstances surrounding the last gathering of the national team.
After the 2026 World Cup, I prepared a letter intended for the Portuguese people, which I still keep, with the words I wish to address to them when I leave our team for good.
At the end of the competition, right from the return flight from the United States, the president of the Federation asked me, insistently, to reconsider my decision to leave, because the FPF wanted me to continue.
He then asked me my opinion on the current coach, whom he was considering appointing, among other names he didn’t reveal to me.
I responded to the president of the Federation that, in my view, it would be the right choice.
That’s why, on the day the current coach was presented, I was genuinely happy about this appointment. It was the right choice, as the results confirm.
A few days later, the new coach contacted me for the first time, telling me that he wanted to meet me in person. I accepted, and we scheduled the meeting for the end of my vacation.
We met at the Cidade do Futebol, where my club was holding its training camp.
That day, the coach told me that he was counting on me and that my presence was fundamental to his project. He immediately presented me with a program for my participation. He told me that I would play the first and last match and that, to manage physical efforts, he would systematically make three to four substitutions per match.
At that moment, he mentioned the possibility that I wouldn’t travel with the team to Norway and Denmark. He suggested that I play the first match, stay in Portugal, then rejoin the group before the match at the Dragão.
I immediately refused this proposal. It seemed obvious to me that I couldn’t accept it. It wasn’t because I wouldn’t play the away matches that I would stop fulfilling my role as captain. This privilege of staying in Portugal wouldn’t have been a good example.
The coach ultimately shared my analysis.
Simão Coutinho, Al-Nassr’s sporting director, attended this conversation. He is the person under whose responsibility the current coach worked throughout the past season, and one of the people responsible for his recruitment by the club in 2025.
The day before the start of the gathering, the coach came to my home in Lisbon for another discussion, at his request. The conversation was calm, and all the principles agreed upon in August were maintained.
I played in the match at Alvalade and, despite being substituted, I didn’t raise any issues. I myself put the armband on Bruno Fernandes’s arm, far from imagining that I might be living my last moments as a player and captain of the national team. What mattered to me that day was our victory. Winning is always enjoyable; in Portugal and for my country, it’s even better.
At lunchtime on the day of the match in Norway, one of the coach’s assistants came to the table where the group was eating and informed me that the coach wanted to speak to me. To my great surprise, he asked me if I was fit to play thirty minutes. I was totally focused on my physical recovery, integrated into the group as always, and I thought I wouldn’t play that day. That didn’t bother me at all.
This request was outside my physical recovery and training program — since I wasn’t supposed to play again until the 4th, at the Dragão — but I obviously said yes. He then told me to be ready, because I would play thirty minutes.
The rest, everyone knows it. I warmed up from halftime onward, I watched the minutes tick by, and I wasn’t called on.
The coach hadn’t kept his word to me.
“At the end of the match, I just wanted it all to end with a win and for me to be left alone. I didn’t go to greet the fans. A mistake for which I alone am responsible and which shouldn’t have happened. I apologize to the Portuguese who supported us fervently on site, to the fans, as well as to those who, without being Portuguese, may have traveled to see me and whom I may have disappointed.
Forty-eight hours later, we had a discussion—the coach, Simão Coutinho, and me, since the latter had attended our exchanges from August.
It was a deep, very frank exchange, with no filter at all.
We agreed that there was only one way to close this “matter”: for the coach to repeat in the press room what he had just told me privately, in the presence of Simão Coutinho.
What had been agreed was simple: the coach would start his press conference with this topic, seeking to close the matter by telling the truth. He would say that I had never asked to play a single minute, that it was he, and no one else, who had proposed this schedule for the camp, and that sending me to warm up without bringing me on had been a mistake he wouldn’t repeat.
We ended that meeting with the coach asking me to hug him, promising me that he would say in the press conference what he had just told me and that we would turn the page. I wouldn’t play in Denmark, and I would feature in the match at the Dragão. All of this, still in the presence of Simão Coutinho.
At the coach’s request, a videoconference meeting was then held between him, Simão Coutinho, and Tiago Craveiro, to summarize our exchanges.
A short document was drafted, which I personally approved and which, to my knowledge, was handed to the coach, as he had requested.
The press conference went as everyone knows: his attitude had nothing to do with the one from our meeting. I heard expressions and an aggressiveness that I don’t think I deserve, a “I want, I can, and I command” stance that he had absolutely never shown me privately the day before.
The notes I had approved were as follows:
“I think it’s important, especially since it’s the truth, to clarify certain things before talking about Denmark:
I myself proposed a program to Cristiano, without anyone else’s intervention, for this season with the national team. We had a long and very good conversation.
I know how much he lives for the national team and loves it, as well as the importance he has in the world. Even more so, I know his weight and his positive influence within the national team for twenty-four consecutive years.
Cristiano accepted the program I proposed to him.
He never questioned my choices. He was exemplary, loyal, and professional.
The match in Norway was not part of the program I had set up for him. However, I felt that he had managed to recover physically after the first match, and I warned him that I might need to have him play. Cristiano agreed.
I made a mistake by sending a player of the stature of Pelé or Maradona to warm up, only to ultimately not bring him on. If I had to do it over today, I wouldn’t do it.
To close the topic: I want Cristiano on the national team. And I don’t want him just a little—I really want him. Fortunately, he believes in me too. He believed in me at Al-Nassr, and he believes in me here as well.
Regarding the fact that he didn’t greet the supporters, we’ve already talked about that. Someone who has played more than 230 matches for the national team doesn’t need lessons from me on love for Portugal. It was a moment of frustration that erases nothing. He’s the player who signs the most autographs, takes the most selfies, and shows the most affection to supporters. Let’s not invent problems where there are none. When we’re unhappy, we react. That’s all it was.”
None of these notes provided for the coach to offer me apologies, then.
It was the second time he had not kept his word to me.
I decided to leave the camp without waiting for another breach of his word. For me, the truth remains the most important thing in relationships between people. Even if it hurts, let them tell me the truth.
Besides, during a conversation with the president of the FPF and the coach, on the morning of that press conference—they can certainly confirm this—I repeated that if they didn’t want me, they had to tell me. All it took was being honest with me. I would have accepted it, and I had promised that we would prepare something beautiful, as I dream it would happen, and that no one would be upset.
I remember it as if it were today. They replied in unison that no. That my place was on the national team.
Never, at any moment, in nearly twenty-five years of career, have I meddled in a technical or tactical decision of a coach or selector. I accept more or less well what is proposed to me to do. I respect the decisions, but when someone doesn’t keep their word to me, I feel that my place is no longer there.
I must also apologize to my teammates on the national team for leaving the camp. Despite the total loss of confidence in the coach’s word, which those who attended those conversations can attest to, I shouldn’t have done it. The responsibility falls exclusively on me.
I once again offer my apologies to the Portuguese, but a broken word has, for me, a determining impact. I felt that from that moment on, my presence would only harm the group, and I did what I have always said I would do if I no longer felt useful: I packed my bags and left.
This act must be examined and sanctioned by the Portuguese Football Federation. I believe the sanction should benefit from no mitigating circumstances. I am not a player like the others; I am the team captain, and that constitutes an aggravating circumstance. I have already apologized, but I know that actions must have consequences. Anyone who operates in football like me knows that, whatever one’s status, the rules are the same for everyone.
On that subject, I hear a lot of talk about farewell matches, about the fact that I must have a dignified farewell and that the Federation wishes to offer me that possibility.
I learned in life, often going hungry and with nothing to eat, that no one gives anything to anyone.
I can promise all my fans, and naturally especially the Portuguese, that we will organize one or more farewell matches. There will be time for that.
But when I think about the national team, what I really think about is the competition. That’s what I thought about on the day I was told of my father’s death. I was at a gathering with our national team and I decided to stay until the end of the next day’s match. In that way, I did for my country what I would never do for any club.
Consequently, if I am in good physical condition, if I play for my club, with goals I hope, after serving the suspension that will be imposed on me, I will be available, as I have always been until today, to play and win with our national team.
There you have it, believe me, the purest truth.”