Ronaldo was mistreated during the 2022 world cup. The coach benched him for most of the quarter-final match and sent him only when 35 minutes or so was left. And as a result Portugal lost to Morocco. Irrespective of his age, Ronaldo remains the top performer for Portugal. But the coach didn't like him and therefore he wasn't given a chance to play for most of the duration. If Fernando Santos remains as the coach, then I don't think that Ronaldo should play for Portugal again. This is not the way to treat a legendary player.
In general, Ronaldo was the main focus in yesterday's world cup match, many people watched the world cup just to see Ronaldo playing at an aging age, but the impression was very different because the Portuguese coach preferred Ronaldo to be backed up making many people very Disappointed, we don't know what policies Fernando Santos is implementing in the World Cup matches this season, does he want to try to see the performance of the Portugal team if Ronaldo doesn't strengthen the team, or coach Fernando Santos has other assumptions. Not only when Portugal against Morocco Ronaldo was only sent 35 minutes before the end of the match, in the previous match Ronaldo was only sent in 20 minutes before the end of the match.
And here it doesn't mean that I don't say Ronaldo Top Performance in this season's world cup match, but Portugal's attack would be better if Ronaldo was there.
From what I heard on TV, the reason the coach from Portugal chose to leave Ronaldo on the bench was because in one of the games the coach substituted Ronaldo, and when Ronaldo was arriving to sit on the bench he complained to the coach for having substituted him, and coach of portugal did not like that attitude of ronaldo and for that reason he started not to put ronaldo to play 90 minutes, and of course that affected the team a lot, and something very visible, in that part the coach of portugal made a lot of mistakes, probably the coach of Portugal
it started from the idea that if ronaldo is not playing at manchester united and has had good results, then if he does the same thing with portugal keeping ronaldo on the bench then they would have good results, and that resulted in the game in which portugal won by 6 - 1 against Switzerland, so the coach of portugal kept the same 11 to play against marricos who had good defense and studied the opponents well, this was the biggest mistake of the coach of portugal, he got carried away by anger and didn't think straight and lost the game
I think the reason why Ronaldo didn't play all the World Cup games from the start, in the knockout stages, and why his career with the Portuguese national team is probably over for good, is much simpler.
Ronaldo today is simply not the player he was a few years ago, a top player who makes a difference in the match with his goals and actions.
The biggest problem is that he is not ready to accept this and in doing so he destroyed the team unity in Manchester United and Portugal, which directly hurt their results, considering that much more was written about a disgruntled Ronaldo than about the teams he plays for.
Considering everything that happened in Qatar, it is very likely that Ronaldo will never play for Portugal again, and that we will not see him at the next European Championship in 2024. His football career is most likely over and all that is left for him is to go to a well-paid football pension to Saudi Arabia.