Ninety-plus minutes in Dallas, and it is over. Mikel Merino meets the ball in injury time, Spain win 1-0, and Cristiano Ronaldo — 41 years old, 976 career goals, five Ballon d'Or trophies — walks off a World Cup pitch for the last time in tears. The greatest individual haul in football history has produced everything except the one medal that defines the sport's ultimate ambition. The numbers are extraordinary.

Ronaldo has scored at a record six World Cups and holds the men's international record with 146 goals for Portugal. Yet his country's best finish in the tournament remains a semi-final run in 2006, when he was a 21-year-old at his very first edition. Nearly two decades later, Portugal have not moved a single round further. That paradox will follow him into retirement.

The debate that has haunted Portugal's camp throughout this tournament did not go quiet after the final whistle. BBC pundit Chris Sutton, watching in Texas, was direct: "He is waddling around the field like a grandad — that is why Portugal are out." Critics had been asking for weeks why Gonçalo Ramos, who joined AC Milan this summer after helping PSG win back-to-back Champions League titles, was kept on the bench. Coach Roberto Martinez, who announced his resignation immediately after the match, offered a different reading.

"We need to thank him for what he tried to do at this World Cup," Martinez said of Ronaldo. "His dream was to win it, and he pursued that dream with an amazing example." Portugal carried four PSG Champions League winners and the Premier League's player of the year, Bruno Fernandes of Manchester United — a squad built to go deep.