From 2026 to 2030:
the Mister takes charge

A Netsonda poll for Observador surveyed the same 483 people in two waves, from 2 to 7 and from 8 to 12 October, and Ronaldo’s text did not change the essentials: 65% disagree with the way he left the camp, before and after. In the first wave, 43% sided more with the national team manager and 10% with the player; in the second, 53% and 14%. On the future, 41% think he should not remain captain and 40% that it is a good time to end his international career. The margin of error is 4.5 points.

Ricardo Quaresma talks about the affair to SIC Caras with one foot outside it — “I’m out of that, I left football, I’m not really involved” — but not without a conclusion: “We’re grown-ups and this could have been settled inside, it didn’t need to come out.”

On the Saturday the Disciplinary Council confirms the proceedings, Pedro Proença speaks on the sidelines of an opening at the Porto Football Association’s academy. He does not comment on the case — “the bodies will assess it independently” — nor on what the national team manager or the captain have said, but he calls it “a misunderstanding” once more and puts the Federation, Jesus and Ronaldo on the same side: “All of us, without exception, want to be together in November.” Along the way, he gives the sporting tally: “four games and four wins”.

The Federation’s Disciplinary Council confirms it has opened disciplinary proceedings against Cristiano Ronaldo over his walkout from the camp in Copenhagen. The decision is dated 9 October; the next day, the case goes to the Disciplinary Investigation Committee. Ronaldo, who had been automatically suspended until the proceedings were opened, is now suspended preventively by the Council’s own decision. Four days earlier, in his statement, it was the captain himself who had asked the FPF to punish him.

Cristiano Ronaldo’s mother talks about her son walking out of the camp in an interview with TV 7 Dias. She admits she cried — “a little bit, it’s good for letting it out” — and regrets the criticism of the captain: “He has already given a lot to Portugal too.”

While Ronaldo’s statement spreads across the country, the national team manager is in Leiria watching the under-21s beat Czechia 2-0. When he gets home, in Aroeira, CMTV is waiting for him with the question of the night. He had not yet read the captain’s text and, for now, has nothing to say.

Six days after leaving the camp, Cristiano Ronaldo keeps his promise and gives his version in a long text posted on social media. He goes back to his first meeting with the new national team manager, at the Cidade do Futebol, and on to the Oslo game: he was asked whether he was ready to play around 30 minutes, said yes, warmed up and never came on. He describes a video call with Simão Coutinho, Al Nassr’s sporting director, which produced the notes for the manager’s press conference — and a commitment that, in his version, was not honoured. He apologises to the fans and to his teammates, admits he should not have left and asks the FPF to punish him with no mitigation, because he is the captain. It is not a farewell: after the suspension, “I will be available, as I always have been until today, to compete and win for our national team”. And he signs off: “This is, believe me, the purest of truths.”

At the same press conference, the question is whether there is room for new faces, and the answer ends up with the Norwegians: their six midfielders and forwards had played all four games in a row and arrived more tired than Portugal. Big and strong, yes; from another planet, no. Along the way, Jesus explains how he prepared four games with no time to train — “practice is the criterion of truth”, and so “I had to switch to theory”, with classroom sessions to correct ideas, above all defensive ones.

At the press conference after Portugal v Norway, Jesus goes back to where the affair began: “The problem that caused this was the fact that the player had been warming up.” He owns the decision and refuses any apology — “I don’t apologise to anyone” — and when he is told of an apology he supposedly made, he answers flatly: “That’s a lie.” On the captain’s return, he repeats what he had said straight after the game: Ronaldo only stays away if he does not want to come back. “He is the one who will decide.”

Kristoffer Ajer puts Norway ahead with a stunning strike and, two minutes later, João Cancelo answers with another, on 38 minutes. On 79, João Félix sets up Gonçalo Ramos for 2-1 — Ramos again, the striker Jesus picked in Ronaldo’s place in Copenhagen. The night still has room for Francisco Conceição’s lightning sending-off, but it ends like the other three: four games, four wins in the Nations League, and a quarter-final place secured with two rounds still to play.

It is the first home game since Cristiano Ronaldo walked out of the camp, and the Dragão does not stay neutral. Long before kick-off, Maisfutebol’s minute-by-minute coverage notes that “some people have not forgotten Cristiano Ronaldo”; when the line-ups are read out, the national team manager’s name is met with whistles. In the second half, the man who leaves to applause is Erling Haaland, substituted after a quiet game.

At the same pre-match press conference for Portugal v Norway, Jesus warns in his own way that there is no margin left: it is the fourth game of the window, and in his version the alarm bells are doorbells. On Ronaldo, that afternoon, he keeps to a single sentence — “Ronaldo is a symbol of the national team and of Portugal” — and pushes the rest back: “The problem right now is called Norway.”

On the eve of Portugal v Norway, Bruno Fernandes — who wore the armband in Denmark and is expected to wear it again at the Dragão, with Cristiano Ronaldo absent once more — faces the press and says he has already spoken to the captain. He insists the squad spent the days in the players’ lounge “playing cards”, outside the controversy, and asks that “the country does not divide, does not take sides, and respects every side”. The rule, he says, is the one any household follows: “Every house should settle its affairs behind closed doors.”

At the end of the Copenhagen match, Jesus goes to celebrate in front of the Portuguese fans and very nearly touches them. He is asked about it, and the answer takes him back to Al Nassr, the club he left in May, and to Cristiano Ronaldo, who had walked out of the national team’s camp the day before. “My closeness to the fans is total,” he explains. Straight after, he is asked whether he feels the country is with him: “Who knows. I know nothing about that. I don’t know, I’d like it to be.”

Tempers flare at the Parken after the final whistle. As the two teams shake hands, Rasmus Hojlund — who had scored Denmark’s second goal and celebrated it Cristiano Ronaldo-style — makes a far from friendly gesture towards Jorge Jesus. The national team manager still answers with a smile, to calm things down; the striker gives him a withering look in return.

A day after Cristiano Ronaldo left the camp, Portugal beat Denmark 4-2 at the Parken and make it three wins from three under Jorge Jesus. João Cancelo scores on 13 minutes after a one-two with Gonçalo Ramos; Damsgaard equalises with a curling shot and, two minutes later, it is Ramos — the starter the national team manager had named the day before — who answers, from a Bruno Fernandes assist. In the second half, Rasmus Hojlund levels again and celebrates Cristiano Ronaldo-style; Vitinha heads in his first goal for Portugal and João Félix, on from the bench, settles it. Before the match, Jesus had declared the matter closed “for now”. At the end, asked about a possible return for the captain, he chose not to answer and spoke only about the performance: “In my opinion, of the three, this was the best game.”

On the eve of the Denmark match, Cristiano Ronaldo announces on Instagram that he is leaving the national team’s camp, “after the national team manager’s press conference and following a conversation with the president of the Portuguese Football Federation”. The FPF confirms his departure and says preparations go on “with the remaining 24 players called up”. For now, nobody is talking about a definitive farewell — neither the player nor the Federation.

At the press conference ahead of Denmark v Portugal, in Copenhagen, SIC’s Nuno Luz asks about the promise made to Ronaldo. Jesus answers the journalist in the second person, insists there is “no issue at all” between him and the captain and confirms who plays the next day: “Gonçalo is the one who’s going to play”. It would be the press conference Ronaldo himself cited, hours later, as he left the camp.

In Malmö, where Portugal are preparing for the match in Copenhagen, Ronaldo, João Félix and Francisco Conceição are missing from the 15 minutes of training open to the media. The captain does come out onto the pitch in a tracksuit, speaks to the national team manager and heads back to the dressing room. In the evening, the two meet at the hotel. Pedro Proença swaps his planned trip to the Azores for a flight to Copenhagen, where he lands in the small hours without making any statement.

Portugal beat Norway 2-1 at the Ullevaal in Oslo, with goals from João Félix and Gonçalo Ramos, and go top of the group. Cristiano Ronaldo spends all 90 minutes on the bench — only the third time since 2003 that he has not come off it in a Portugal match. Afterwards, Jesus says he had planned to bring him on for the last half-hour, but that Gonçalo Ramos, with one goal scored and another disallowed, was doing well: “It was by choice.” And he drops a hint for the next match: “Maybe against Denmark it’ll be him who plays.”

Jorge Jesus starts with a win: Portugal beat Wales 1-0 on the opening matchday of the Nations League, with a João Félix shot deflected in off Ben Davies. Ronaldo starts and does find the net on 58 minutes, but VAR rules it out for offside. The match the international press had flagged in July as the captain’s farewell ends with no farewell at all — and the man who comes on in his place is Gonçalo Ramos, the name that would weigh heavily over the days that followed.

After the unveiling, the calendar points to Jorge Jesus’s official debut in the Nations League, with the aim of defending the title won in the previous edition before looking ahead to Euro 2028 and the 2030 World Cup.

The national team manager watches Estrela da Amadora v Sporting, on the opening matchday of the Liga Betclic, at the Estádio José Gomes, where he played and coached. Before kick-off he greets Frederico Varandas effusively; the line is his own, posted on Instagram at the end of the night.

For Benfica v Hearts, Jorge Jesus goes to the Estádio da Luz with João Vieira Pinto to watch Rafa Silva, Tomás Araújo and Samuel Soares — and Cláudio Braga too, on the Scottish side. The distance the FPF president chose to keep from the Benfica president did not go unnoticed, after the recent disagreements between federation and club.

Al Nassr close their training camp at the Cidade do Futebol with a 2-0 defeat to Almería, the goals from Daijiro Chirino and Adrián Embarba. João Félix comes on after 71 minutes; Cristiano Ronaldo watches from the stands, a few seats away from the national team manager who does not yet know whether he will be able to count on him.

Jorge Jesus watches Braga v Zeleznicar Pancevo, in the Conference League preliminary round, alongside Pedro Proença. Benfica were playing St. Gallen the same night, and choosing a squad that had not sent a single player to the 2026 World Cup — even though Ricardo Horta had been in contention — was read by the press as a message of change.

Al Nassr chose Lisbon for their pre-season, and the new Portugal manager turned up on the pitch to watch the players he coached until May in training — shaking hands, along the way, with Ange Postecoglou, the man who took his job.

Several international outlets report that Cristiano Ronaldo has already chosen the date of his farewell to the national team: 24 September, against Wales, at Alvalade — Jorge Jesus’s debut match, no less. A word of warning: the report is attributed to a Portuguese agent, quoted by the journalist Moataz Elgamsal, and has been confirmed by neither the player nor the FPF.

For the first time in history, six national teams have qualified before there has even been a draw: the three European and African hosts are joined by Uruguay, Argentina and Paraguay, who stage the centenary matches. FIFA has not yet settled whether the finals will have 48 or 64 teams — but, whatever the number, Jorge Jesus has four years ahead of him and zero qualifiers to fail.

In the same Canal 11 interview, Jorge Jesus reveals that he came closer to the Brazil bench than anyone ever knew — to the point of having already received instructions to prepare a list. The offer never materialised, and the job turned out to be a different one.

Ten days after signing, Jesus goes on Canal 11 to warn that there will be no revolution in September: “two or three” new players compared with the 26 at the World Cup, and little more. Along the way he also calls the Nations League “the hardest competition”, because “you’ll always be up against the best teams in Europe”. The line that went round social media and the story of the night are exactly the same thing.

The most disarming line of the Canal 11 interview is not about squad call-ups or about Ronaldo: it is about what the manager himself thinks the job is. Without a team that plays better than it did at the World Cup, he insists, changing who sits on the bench won’t change the result.

The national team manager explains how he intends to run a dressing room with hierarchies without making exceptions to the rules. He names no one — and doesn’t need to.

On the day the appointment is made official, Diário de Notícias puts a number on the new national team manager’s salary: the same four million euros the Federation paid Roberto Martínez, on a contract running to 2030. It is the figure behind the “same salary” Pedro Proença used to win him over — with the half a million euros for the coaching staff on top.

Pedro Proença offered Jorge Jesus exactly the same salary the FPF had been paying Roberto Martínez, and the manager accepted on the spot. From Al Nassr come João de Deus, Fábio Jesus and Tiago Oliveira; Márcio Sampaio and Ricardo Silva take charge of fitness and Nélson Pereira joins Ricardo with the goalkeepers. New country, and he packed the lot.

The pundits are split: some point to the trophy haul and the “high-profile leadership” Jesus brings back to the national team; others ask whether the appointment is mainly about media and politics, in a debate set to run until the official debut.

Asked about his relationship with the national team captain, Jorge Jesus recalls their time together at Al-Nassr — where he has already managed the forward’s minutes and spells on the bench — and promises to call Ronaldo up whenever he is fit to be selected.

At the unveiling press conference, at the Cidade do Futebol, Jorge Jesus answers the doubts about his age with good humour and sums up his tenure in three words: “viemos para vencer” (“we came to conquer”).

The press conference ran under the motto the Federation had chosen for the cycle, “viemos para vencer” (“we came to conquer”), and the first thing the new national team manager did was read it out loud. He called it a “lógan” — his take on “slogan” — and handed it back swapped, “nós viemos para ganhar”, with the everyday word for “win” in place of the motto’s, before repeating it as written and signing off with: “we’re convinced that wherever we get to, we win”. The Federation’s line stood as the motto of his tenure; it was the pronunciation that made it a Jesusism.

The deal signed by Jorge Jesus covers the Nations League, Euro 2028 and the 2030 World Cup, on a lower salary than he was earning at Al-Nassr.

The Portuguese Football Federation officially announces the appointment of Jorge Jesus, 71, as the 33rd Portugal national team manager, succeeding Roberto Martínez.

On the eve of his unveiling, Diário de Notícias runs the numbers on the CV the Federation is hiring: in all, Jorge Jesus has coached 16 teams. At Benfica he won three league titles, one Taça de Portugal, one Supertaça and five Taças da Liga; at Sporting, one Supertaça and one Taça da Liga. In 2018 he swapped Portugal for Saudi Arabia to coach Al Hilal; at Flamengo he won the Brasileirão and the Libertadores; he spent a season at Fenerbahçe; and last season he was Saudi champion with Al Nassr.

On the eve of the official announcement, the press reports that the invitation to join the coaching staff had reached Pepe and that the former centre-back had turned it down. His name would still be doing the rounds the next day, but by the afternoon of the unveiling the refusal was being treated as settled: Pepe received the FPF’s invitation and “chose not to accept the challenge”.

Before the official announcement, the sports press debates the pros and cons of the Jorge Jesus option, with opinion split between the weight of the manager’s CV and doubts about his more recent form.

The Spanish coach calls time on his spell with the national team straight after the exit, arguing that carrying on would only have made sense had he won the trophy. The FPF makes the departure official the same day.

Aged 41, the captain confirms as he leaves the pitch that there will be no sixth World Cup — but refuses to close the national team chapter in the same breath, warning that he does not want to “make decisions in the heat of the moment”. The answer that runs through the whole cycle now beginning is put on hold.

Merino’s stoppage-time goal wipes out Portugal’s 2026 World Cup run and, in practice, brings Roberto Martínez’s cycle in charge of the national team to a close.