Merino's late winner sends Spain past Ronaldo and Portugal

IN THE MIK OF TIME: Spain's Mikel Merino scores the winner. Pic: AP Photo/Tony Gutierrez.

Spain 1 Portugal 0

A quick call to the Oval Office perhaps?

Cristiano Ronaldo’s World Cup career came to an end, apparently, here. But can we truly know in this tournament where Donald Trump and Gianni Infantino appear so keen to put a finger on the scales? Where power talks loudest?

Roberto Martinez’s men went out after a second stanza when they deserved almost nothing. Spain hadn’t merited much but Mikel Merino did enough to swing it all.

In a dreadful second-half played at a pace where you thought tumbleweed may whisper and blow through the place, it came from something so rare: a quick action. A free-kick awarded about 35 yards out was swiftly put down by Merino.

He’d been on the field just six minutes and so wasn’t struck with the same stasis everyone else had been. He laid it off for Fabian Ruiz to start a triangle on which the world turned. Rodri fed Ferran Torres who slipped Merino in and he tucked it emphatically low to Diogo Costa’s right side.

Breakthrough and, after a peculiar hour of low noise and energy, overdue bedlam. Spain go on to a Los Angeles quarter-final against either Belgium or the US, the tournament’s most controversial contest to come and sure to overshadow the final moments of Ronaldo.

Dallas feels uncomfortable with being a place where things have come to an end. An early morning stroll down Main Street, turning right on to Houston and taking the left curve on to Elm finds the early sun glowing down on the old Book Depository.

Everything about Dealey Plaza and its puzzle pieces feels very understated. One could quite literally walk by and have no idea that history turned there. Perhaps because its still such a key artery in and out of the city. Maybe because they’d prefer skip the grisly and focus more on grander moments of history.

Twenty miles out west, another landmark had the opportunity to play host to a different kind of ending. Ronaldo has spoken the night before Dallas’s Iberian derby of how “They’ve tried to kill me for 23 years”. It wasn’t ever clear who ‘they' were.

One to be thrown into the heaving ‘conspiracy’ section of the book building perhaps. But he had conclusively confirmed this was his final World Cup. Given the opposition at hand, it added another edge to a Monday lunchtime Last 16 affair. Don’t wait for the documentary, come watch The Last Prance live, in the flesh.

There were various roars, then boos, rumbling through the place in the hours pre-game. When the stadium announcer showed footage of Ronaldo getting on the bus, then off the bus, then on the pitch. The usual. There was also his trademark awkward tuck-in to the right of goalkeeper Diogo Costa during the anthems. He’ll go out the same way he came in: preening. Then we were off.

Portugal's Cristiano Ronaldo reacts after Portugal lost to Spain. Pic: AP Photo/Sam Hodde.

The opening 45 minutes, 51 in fact, gave us a first half of almost. It was almost a thoroughly enjoyable half of football, almost filled with goals and great passes but none of those things actually came off. Chances came and went. So many triangles, overloads and overlaps all fell apart at their very end and, most of all, Spain were left to wonder how they hadn’t taken the lead.

With the quietest four-goal haul of this World Cup, Mikel Oyarzabal’s form has brought him long-delayed attention. Yet on seven minutes he was all alone and wasted the best chance of the half, a gorgeous Dani Olmo pass pulled wide. Soon after Costa produced a stunning double save, like a training routine of flinging yourself to either side in quick succession as he denied Lamine Yamal and Alex Baena.

Ronaldo would finish the half with the fewest touches by a distance. Not a surprise. But in one brief phase when he came deep to intercept, control and get Portugal going again, he briefly looked 10 years younger. Nuno Mendes had the half’s most spectacular nearly moment, his rasper from a short corner routine flicking off Pedro Porro’s head and crashing off the bar.

Yamal was nearly electric and Rodri close to being in control of a kinda compelling midfield battle against Vitinha and Joao Neves. But almost wasn’t enough and it already felt like a lunchtime that could go long.

That we reached the hydration break of the second-half and the only crowd pop since the interval had been for Emmitt Smith, a former Cowboy who retired 22 years ago, tells you how definitively it went to almost awful. Portugal camped deep and Spain weren’t doing enough with the majority of possession. The game and the entire place needed something.

Martinez began a pretty early emptying of his bench, to not much avail. Yamal’s routes were mostly blind alleys, Ferran Torres saw a cutback roll harmlessly across goal, Bruno Fernandes found side-netting in a rare foray up the other end.

Merino finally gave us all the moment we’d waited so long for. Up the other end, Portugal’s last throes came not from Ronaldo but Bernardo Silva and Joao Neves. To no avail. Ronaldo cried and then waved as he disappeared down the tunnel. Gone. For good. We think.

Portugal (4-2-3-1): Costa; Joao Cancelo, Dias, Veiga, Nuno Mendes; Joao Neves, Vitinha; Pedro Neto, Burno Fernandes, Joao Felix; Ronaldo.

Subs: Semedo for Nuno Mendes (56), Dalot for Cancelo (71), Leao for Felix (71), Silva for Vitinha (83), Conceicao for Neto (83).

Spain (4-2-3-1): Simon; Porro, Cubarsi, Laporte, Cucurella; Pedri, Rodri; Yamal, Olmo, Baena; Oyarzabal.

Subs: Torres for Baena (75), Merino for Olmo (85), Ruiz for Pedri (85), Iglesias for Oyarzabal (90).

Referee: Anthony Taylor (England).

Attendance: 70,649.