Underachieved? Gary Neville says that Cristiano Ronaldo ‘overachieved’ just by being at a World Cup at the age of 37.
Ronaldo was benched by Portugal boss Fernando Santos as Portugal exited at the quarter-final stage to Morocco.
He can now concentrate on the small matter of finding a new club after his contract at Manchester United were mutually terminated.
Neville – who has been doing his World Cup awards on the Sky Sports website – rejected claims that Ronaldo underachieved in Qatar.
‘I think Cristiano Ronaldo will feel he has underachieved after the way Portugal went out.
‘Argentina as a group have come around Messi and played to his strengths, I thought Fernando Santos and Portugal would have done the same with Ronaldo. It just feels like something happened in the tournament which led to those plans being changed.
‘Once you leave Ronaldo out it becomes a global story. I felt sorry for Cristiano walking down the tunnel at the end in tears. That’s never a good image because you know he knows he is never going to play in this tournament again.’
‘I wouldn’t class it as an underachievement from Cristiano, it’s an overachievement for him to be doing what he’s doing at 37 years of age. It’s just the way it ended with him being out of the team, and how disappointing and poor Portugal were as a group chasing the game against Morocco.’
Neville argued at the real underachievers of the tournament were Belgium, saying: ‘They were the team I was most disappointed with. The manner in which they were eliminated, the communications coming out of the camp didn’t feel right.
‘I think Belgium fell out of love with each other, having grown old together things got a bit stale and sometimes things need breaking up. Things you would never expect were coming out of the camp, saying they were past their best the day before games. Imagine how that made the other players in the group feel.
‘You knew once Belgium started talking like that it was going to be very difficult for Roberto Martinez to be able to get them into a good space.’
Unsurprisingly, Neville declared his player of the tournament to be Lionel Messi, with Julian Alvarez as the young player.
‘Alvarez has become really important to Messi. When Messi was playing with Lautaro Martinez earlier in the tournament it wasn’t really happening for him, but Alvarez has emerged in the last few games and his work in and around Messi is noticeable. He’s a bright spark, he’s on the same wavelength as Messi.
‘Mbappe has got some great players around him whereas the players around Messi are of a good standard but not at the same level. Messi is nothing like the player he was 10 years ago obviously because of his age, but he’s just delivering in one or two moments, unbelievable moments with an assist, a goal.’
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