Who shot CR? Ronaldo's Portugal soap opera rolls into Dallas 

It's an Iberian derby in the vast home of the Cowboys on Monday night.

DALLAS MAVERICK: Portugal's forward Cristiano Ronaldo answers to journalists during a press conference at the Dallas Stadium in Arlington. Pic: Paul ELLIS / AFP via Getty Images

CR7 x MD-1 is, apparently, an equation with its own rules.

World Cup matchday minus-1 press conferences generally see a manager and player from each competing nation stream into a big auditorium to face 30 minutes of light probing. In Dallas on Sunday lunchtime, that was dispensed with. It would be an afternoon when plenty more was dispensed with.

Cristiano Ronaldo would not sit side by side with Roberto Martinez but instead came in and commanded the room himself for 15 minutes before swapping out. There was, alas, no query put to Ronaldo on the breaking bombshell that FIFA had tossed out tournament precedent and competitive legitimacy too in granting US striker Folarin Balogun a reprieve from his red card against Bosnia, granting a reported wish from President Donald Trump that Balogun face Belgium in the Last 16. As ever with some of the most farcical and galling happenings in modern football, Ronaldo’s influence had played a part.

Last November, seven days after Ronaldo had been a guest of Trump’s at a White House banquet for Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, Gianni Infantino’s compromised FIFA regime lifted two of the three-game ban Ronaldo had been hit with after his red card for elbowing Dara O’Shea in Dublin. In essence, the Ronaldo Rule — if you’re famous and powerful enough and have Gianni’s number, you can probably get away with it — has been extended Balogun’s way.

What a perfectly apt time and place this is for Portugal’s 41-year-old captain. After being showered with wild adoration by tens of thousands of Portuguese-Canadians in the days either side of the Last-32 win over Croatia in Toronto, Portugal arrived in Cowboy country Saturday night.

The nearly $2 billion Dallas Stadium is the pride and joy of owner Jerry Jones, the man at the helm of the most valuable sports team in the world. It’s a staggeringly enormous bowl of steel and concrete which rises out of flat nothingness 20 miles from downtown. Jones takes such pride in it perhaps because the team that plays in it doesn’t provide much of the same. Since their opening year here in 2009, the Cowboys haven’t make the NFL playoffs in 10 of the 16 seasons since. The Super Bowl drought is 31 years and counting.

But still, this is a franchise worth an estimated $14 billion. Why? The impression of greatness.

If requisite time, money and propaganda is pushed towards the idea of a person or place being great, enough people will believe it. America’s 250th birthday speech delivered by Trump on Saturday night contained about as many references to greatness as one would expect. Spending so much time traversing this place over the past month however has left a very different impression.

Before he was applauded out of the press conference room in Dallas, Ronaldo did some grandstanding of his own. Like the Cowboys, he is no longer anywhere near great but the impression is what matters. Against Croatia he had had exactly one touch in the opposition box, a penalty won by someone else. FIFA rewarded this display with a man of the match award. Sure.

On Monday afternoon at Jones’ cavernous cathedral, Ronaldo and Portugal will face Spain in a Last 16 encounter which has so many layers to it. The two best midfields in the tournament will meet and you’d think mostly decide matters between them. They’ll decide whether Dallas is the end point of the Ronaldo era. It would be a fitting one.

“This is going to be the very last World Cup that I can enjoy,” he said. "Inshallah tomorrow is not going to be my last match.” He has brought the language of his current home to this tournament. When he kissed the ball and placed it on the penalty spot in Toronto he said “Bismillah” (In the name of god) multiple times. Less helpfully for his paymasters, he has also brought the evidence that playing in Saudi Arabia is not the best preparation to take on the world.

Portugal arrive here as a work in progress, or more accurately, a team trying to make progress by working around their captain. Martinez was finally brave enough to remove Ronaldo in the Croatia game, Gonçalo Ramos delivering the brilliant late winner as the focal point up top. Martinez batted away queries on whether he may opt to pair the two up top against Spain. Some tweaks are expected.

Luis de la Fuente’s men enjoyed quite probably the easiest afternoon’s work of any side in the Last 32 and have clearly benefited from the opening day jolt provided by Cape Verde. In the 3-0 stroll against Austria he reverted to a middle trio of Rodri, Pedri and Dani Olmo, the latter preferred to Fabian Ruiz and Mikel Merino. The balance was a beautiful thing. Spain are also benefitting from Lamine Yamal growing more and more into his first World Cup.

The winners here on Monday will be sent on a path to meet whoever comes out on top between the USA and Belgium, Balogun’s absurd acquittal potentially a game-changer there. For Spain, it’s likely that their Last 16 challenge is far greater than what awaits next. The Iberian cousins met in a rollicking Nations League Final in Munich last June, Ronaldo scoring in a 2-2 draw which Portugal won on penalties. Martinez was without João Neves that day but will have him in Dallas alongside Vitinha and Bruno Fernandes in that middle battle.

“It’s not only going to be demanding for our own midfielders,” said Martinez. "Midfield is what we really need to be focusing on. The important thing is the team knows how to suffer.” Ronaldo’s final suffering? Dallas will decide.