colombia vs. portugal (june 27, 2026)

the effort they put into not accepting cristiano ronaldo as a leader might be more than the effort they put into winning the world cup. the players being unbelievably distant toward one another. there's a separate coldness toward ronaldo, but the problem isn't just that either. bruno, neto, vitinha... none of them give off an energy that pulls the others up. everyone's playing their own match. we are watching live as a team fails to emerge from 11 quality footballers.

cristiano ronaldo and lionel messi are both physically spent. an outside observer looking at the two of them would see that portugal is the better team and would predict ronaldo being carried up to a point. but the exact opposite is at work. even though messi is physically spent, because he's a tremendous passing station in attack, argentina plays far more compact and like a favorite, whereas portugal is left with 10 men because of ronaldo and, since it can't press high up, is constantly left short on turnovers. they don't need haaland; if they had a forward even half as good as him and had the guts to not put ronaldo in the 11, i'd say they could see a semifinal, but it's going to be a short journey for them, mark my words. they're ruining a midfield and defense generation like this because of ronaldo.

colombia is a machine of a team. their physical strength is the caliber of african teams. their only thing missing is a clear-cut center forward. if a prime radamel falcao were on this team, they'd play the final against france.