Ronaldo takes the headlines but Portugal success depends on everyone else

Portugal beat Ghana in a game in which all the action was packed into the last half-hour, and they almost dropped two points at the death.

So Portugal are up and running, but this didn’t happen without a fair amount of wheezing first and some butterflies in the stomach at the end.

For almost 75 minutes against Ghana they were pretty tepid, a goal up 20 minutes into the second half thanks to a penalty kick that came about from a rash tackle, with two goals in three minutes, scored by Joao Felix and Rafael Leao, to eventually see them home by what should have been a comfortable margin.

But even after all that, a second Ghana goal and nine minutes of stoppage-time left them hanging on for a win that they had several opportunities to coast towards, and in the very last seconds, they might even have dropped two points when a sudden and very unexpected chance opened up for Ghana which ended in a slip and some deep Portuguese breaths.

Ghana have had an up and down sort of year. At the very start of 2022 they flew to Cameroon for the African Cup of Nations and promptly finished bottom of their group, drawing with Gabon and losing to both Morocco and Comoros. Having sacked their manager and replaced him, they returned to competitive action at the end of March in the CAF qualifiers.

It’s fair to say that they qualified by the skin of their teeth. They’d won their group the previous November by one goal on goals scored from South Africa, after tying with them on both points and goal difference and then beating them 1-0 in their final match.

In the play-offs under new head coach Otto Addo, they followed a goalless draw in Kumasi with a 1-1 draw in Abuja to secure their place at the finals.

The pre-match attention, of course, had been about a certain player and his departure from a certain club which soon afterwards was put up for a certain financial transaction. Were the Portugal team still on speaking terms? Was there a chance that the dressing rooms were a silent and moody place with a heavy atmosphere, Cristiano Ronaldo and Bruno Fernandes occasionally glowering at each other over the top of their newspapers?

Portugal have qualified for every World Cup since 2002 having only ever done so twice in the 20th century, but since reaching the semi-finals and losing to France in 2006 they haven’t got past the second round of the competition in three attempts.

Meanwhile, for all the talk of breaking records for scoring in five tournaments, even now he’s…