Open war between Cristiano Ronaldo and the Portugal national team coach

BarcelonaCristiano Ronaldo has left the Portugal training camp in Denmark, according to reports from several Portuguese media outlets. The 41-year-old forward, a living legend of Portugal, is leaving following comments by head coach Jorge Jesus regarding his absence in the matches against Norway, in which he did not play a single minute, and after stating that he would not play against Denmark this Thursday either, both matches being part of the UEFA Nations League. Thus, Ronaldo, furious, has left his national team's training camp while he still had two more matches left to play: the aforementioned one against the Danes and, again, against Norway on Sunday.

The match against the Scandinavian team on Sunday is the trigger for all of this. On Sunday, Ronaldo watched from the bench as Jesus opted for Joao Félix and Gonçalo Ramos as the starting strikers. Both were the scorers for the Portuguese team, which won 1-2 in Oslo. But Ronaldo, whom the Portuguese coach had made warm up in the second half, was overcome with anger, and when the final whistle blew, he headed straight for the locker room. On Monday, the day after the duel against Erling Haaland's Norway, Ronaldo did not train with the rest of the substitutes as he should have. Neither on Tuesday. And this Wednesday, the final bombshell: he did not come out to train because the Portuguese icon has decided to abandon the training camp.

Jesus, the replacement for the Catalan Robert Martínez on the bench and who had already managed the forward at Al-Nassr, had wanted to dispel the controversy before it transpired that Ronaldo would leave. "Yesterday he did not refuse to train. He did gym work. Conceição did not train due to injury, nor did Joao Félix, because we were trying to alleviate fatigue," he said, and guaranteed that Ronaldo would train this Wednesday, but that did not happen and the scandal erupted. "I told him he would not play these two matches, but during the match I thought that maybe I would need him and that he would go out to warm up. Afterwards, however, I did not make him play. No player, when they are warming up for twenty or thirty minutes and finally do not enter the field, is happy. And even less so him," Jesus had dismissed shortly before the Portuguese packed his bags.