Ronaldo calls time on Portugal career

Six World Cups is the number that actually stops you. From Germany 2006 through to this year's tournament, Ronaldo turned up at every single one, scored at every single one, and finishes with 11 World Cup goals across those six campaigns, per BBC Sport. No Portuguese player has come close to that kind of World Cup longevity, and few players anywhere have managed it at all.

The raw numbers for Portugal are staggering on their own: 234 caps, 146 goals. He played for the national team across four different decades, carried the captaincy and the goalscoring load through tournament after tournament, and delivered the one trophy that had eluded Portugal for generations when they won Euro 2016.

A World Cup story with no clean ending

What makes the World Cup leg of his career interesting isn't a trophy, because Portugal never got the one that mattered most on that stage. It's the sheer refusal to stop showing up. A teenager at the 2006 semi-final run, the captain and talisman through three more tournaments in between, and still turning out at a sixth World Cup deep into his forties. Eleven goals spread across six tournaments isn't a record built on one golden vintage. It's a record built on never missing one.

The end of a Portugal era

BBC Sport's retrospective doesn't lay out the exact circumstances of the announcement, but the substance of it is clear enough: the international career is over. Portugal now moves into a different chapter, one where the shirt, the captaincy and the goalscoring burden all belong to someone else.

That handover was already underway in practical terms, with Portugal's attack increasingly shaped around a younger generation even while Ronaldo kept adding to his tally. His retirement simply makes that shift official.

Why this matters beyond Portugal

Ronaldo's international career tracked the entire modern history of the World Cup as a television product: he arrived as a wide forward in 2006 and leaves as one of the most recognisable athletes on the planet, having played in the tournament across six different hosting nations and six different eras of the game's tactics. Any ranking of the great international careers now has to include a man who scored at a World Cup as a teenager and still scored at one in his forties.

The numbers close the book: 11 World Cup goals, six tournaments, 146 goals and 234 caps for Portugal, an international career that outlasted most of the players who grew up idolising him.