C.Ronaldo’s series of impressive performances helped Portugal on clinching their spot in the 2014 World Cup with the star of Real Madrid scoring a hat-trick during a qualification match against Sweden as well making another standout display in a friendly match against Cameroon.
From there on out it was a downhill path for the former Manchester United player as he could not continue pushing Portugal to the next stages of the 2014 World Cup and had to settle with a 3rd spot in Group G which wasn’t enough for them to advance any further.
According to the Portuguese winger Ricardo Quaresma, one of the main problems that Portugal had was that the team relied on C.Ronaldo too much.
“We cannot just put pressure on Cristiano and he does not play alone. I think we Portuguese put too much pressure on just one player. The team is not just Cristiano. No player in the world can solve a game if you do not have colleagues behind him. I think that we Portuguese have failed [at the World Cup] because we put too much pressure on one player only. I think also we failed because all the other players who were next to Cristiano maybe didn’t feel comfortable about everyone talking about just one player and not the rest of the squad.”
Ricardo Quaresma is a former player of Inter Milan who has represented and played for Portugal at the international stage as he has been featured in qualifying matches and he was included in the provisional list of the head coach Paulo Bento but when the tactician decided to cut his list to only 23 player, Quaresma was excluded from the squad.