Ronaldo Might Miss Out on South Africa 2010

With all the hype sur­round­ing Cris­tiano Ronaldo’s £80m move from Man­ches­ter United to Real Madrid, a harsh real­ity is being for­got­ten. For a man who craves the spot­light, while he may be bask­ing in the glory at the moment, there is a very real pos­si­bil­ity that next sum­mer, as all eyes turn to South Africa, that Ronaldo will become the for­got­ten man of world football.

With just four games to go in the FIFA World Cup Euro­pean Qual­i­fy­ing, Por­tu­gal sit in third place in Group One, four points behind sec­ond placed Hun­gary and a seem­ingly insur­mount­able seven points behind top spot. Are we set to see a World Cup finals with­out the famous Por­tu­gal shirts?

For a coun­try, which boasts the most expen­sive foot­baller in the world and who have been con­sis­tent fea­tures in the lat­ter stages of the past few major foot­ball tour­na­ments, to miss out on the worlds biggest sport­ing event might be unthink­able but it is a very harsh real­ity for Ronaldo and his countrymen.

Indeed were it not for an injury time win­ner from defender Bruno Alves in Alba­nia last week, Portugal’s stars may already be book­ing their hol­i­days for the sum­mer 2010. For Ronaldo in par­tic­u­lar, it is unimag­in­able that the spot­light should shine not on him but on other top stars such as Lionel Messi and new Madrid team-mate Kaka.

In the space of five days in early Sep­tem­ber, Por­tu­gal face a crunch dou­ble header which will deter­mine whether or not they will be at the 2010 World Cup. First up, they travel to group lead­ers Den­mark know­ing that noth­ing less than a vic­tory will be enough to keep their qual­i­fi­ca­tion hopes alive. Win­ning the group is already beyond Por­tu­gal, but they must ensure at all costs they are at least in a qual­i­fi­ca­tion play-off.

This match is fol­lowed on the Wednes­day with an equally dif­fi­cult trip to Hun­gary, who they will be hop­ing will have dropped points at home to Swe­den five days ear­lier. Even in this sce­nario, it leaves the Swedes as another legit­i­mate threat to Portugal’s qual­i­fi­ca­tion hopes.

The good news for Por­tu­gal is that their qual­i­fi­ca­tion fate is in their own hands. Four vic­to­ries from their remain­ing four games will be enough to at least get them into a play-off. Fur­ther­more, they cer­tainly have a squad capa­ble of achiev­ing those four victories.

Now they just need to home the Ronaldo sideshow doesn’t derail their qual­i­fi­ca­tion hopes.

Writ­ten by Danny Wat­son, a pro­fes­sional sports writer who blogs about foot­ball news.