Portugal won 3-0 against Türkiye to become the third team to advance early to the group stage of EURO 2024. This was the match where Cristiano Ronaldo captured all the attention even though he did not score.

The race hasn’t ended yet

In the situation where Portugal set the score 3-0, Ronaldo, despite facing the opponent’s goalkeeper, still passed to Bruno Fernandes to score. We don’t know if Ronaldo had much intention when doing that?

Suppose Ronaldo directly shoots and is blocked, he will be criticized. If he scores a goal, it will be very welcome as Ronaldo continues to consolidate his position as the player who scores the most goals at EURO tournaments.

But passing to Fernandes to score, Ronaldo has even more benefits. First of all, CR7 received the record for the player who created the most goals in EURO tournaments. Remember, creating assists is much more difficult than scoring because it depends on the situations that follow. Therefore, Ronaldo’s EURO assist record is now 7 while CR7’s EURO scoring record is also double.

Ronaldo shined for Portugal in their 3-0 win over Türkiye.

That clearing pass from Ronaldo completely conquered the junior players, of whom Fernandes is the new leader. In the following matches, the junior players will be more willing to cooperate with Ronaldo. And in the media, the image of Ronaldo being generous and being generous to his teammates gradually covered up the traces of Ronaldo being selfish in scoring goals…

Didn’t score but received countless compliments and at this time it can be questioned that Ronaldo is back on track with his rival Lionel Messi with the “GOAT title”.

This race has been brewing for a long time. But when Messi wins the 2022 World Cup, many people believe that GOAT is considered the owner because Ronaldo cannot win the world championship. In addition, Messi has Copa America 2021 as well as 8 Golden Balls.

But perhaps there is a turning point for Ronaldo to show his greaterness than Messi. Imagine Ronaldo shining to help Portugal win EURO 2024?

During the last EURO championship in 2016, Portugal was considered too lucky to not win any group stage matches, only winning 1 match in 90 minutes throughout the tournament. In this tournament, Portugal had 2 wins and if Ronaldo’s generation can win again, no one can say they are lucky.

When comparing the issue between Ronaldo and Messi or the issue of prestige between the World Cup and EURO, it comes back to the issue of winning the World Cup or EURO being more difficult. Until now, the back and forth between Kylian Mbappe and Messi before EURO surrounding the difficulty of the World Cup or EURO has not yet been resolved.

Will 2 EURO championships be more valuable than 1 World Cup championship?

Messi has reason to highlight the World Cup because EURO does not have the presence of strong teams from South America. Mbappe also has reason to say EURO is more difficult because the French striker scored 12 goals at the World Cup even though he is only 25 years old but has not yet scored at EURO.

Mbappe’s argument becomes more reasonable than anyone else said because he shined at the World Cup helping France win in 2018, but this player’s generation has not won the EURO. Mbappe’s point of view will certainly receive Ronaldo’s approval because it makes it easier for CR7 to become GOAT.

We can see that in the 21st century, European teams compete to win the World Cup, including: Italy in 2006, Spain in 2010, Germany in 2014 and France in 2018. In addition to the generation, Spain also won the World Cup. World Cup and EURO, the remaining teams cannot win the European throne even if they win the world championship.

On the contrary, Greece winning EURO 2004 or Portugal winning EURO 2016 cannot do anything at the World Cup. Therefore, saying that winning EURO or World Cup is more difficult will be an unanswerable topic.

But in the end, Argentina winning the 2022 World Cup also had many elements of luck at a tournament where they even lost to Saudi Arabia. Therefore, comparing 1 EURO title with 1 World Cup championship will not be able to create a convincing answer.

Only when the number 2 championships appears is it a confirmation. If Ronaldo can help Portugal win another EURO, CR7 will definitely have a chance to turn the situation around when history judges who is the GOAT of the early 21st century.