World Cup 2010 Qualifying: Ronaldo's plight is not as bad as it looks

Hands up who would like to see Cristiano Ronaldo not go to the World Cup? Quite a few? The majority? Such is the measure of the World Footballer Of The Year's vilification that there must be a significant number of football fans who would love it if he didn't make it to South Africa. Love it!

On the other hand, Ronaldo is one of the best players in the whole world. Why would you not want to see him playing on the ultimate stage? And yet that is precisely what could happen to both him and his Portugal team mates. In fact, if it weren't for a last minute equaliser from Liedson against Denmark last Saturday, they would be out by now. So how on Earth did a team with their pedigree found themselves find themselves so close to oblivion?

Well, the presence of the goalscorer Liedson in the side illustrates part of the problems faced by coach Carlos Queiroz.

Liedson is a Brazilian like Deco. Only unlike Deco, the 31-year-old has only recently become naturalised. His selection for the Portuguese team has attracted understandable controversy. Critics argue that the Sporting Lisbon striker is a ringer and the only reason he is in the team is because is of their appalling goalscoring record and absence of a native international class striker. In the last six matches played in their World Cup qualifying campaign, Portugal have scored just six goals. Three of those games (including a bore draw against whipping boys Albania) yielded none. It is that run that places the Portuguese in their current parlous position.

However, it is is not by any means the end of Portugal's World Cup dream. When you look at their results so far (see below), they have only lost once and that was to group leaders Denmark. Their next two games are against second placed Hungary who are in an entirely false position. The Magyars occupy that spot by virtue of the fact that they have played easy opposition in Albania and Malta twice. After that, Portugal face the Maltese at home. It is not beyond the realms of possibility that Ronaldo and his team mates could walk away with maximum points. That's still enough to win Group 1 (although very unlikely) and more than enough to claim a play-off place, especially when you consider that Sweden and Denmark have to play each other.

Of course this won't make up for the deficiencies in their squad. Questions remain about the midfield and Queiroz' selection policy. however, the other way of looking at it would be that Portugal are unbeaten in five with a favourable run in. We may yet see Cristiano Ronaldo in South Africa next year. Whether that's a good thing or not I'll leave you to decide.

Portugal's World Cup Qualifying results so far:

Sep 6 2008 (W) Malta 0 - 4 Portugal
Sep 10 2008 (L) Portugal 2 - 3 Denmark
Oct 11 2008 (D) Sweden 0 - 0 Portugal
Oct 15 2008 (D) Portugal 0 - 0 Albania
Mar 28 2009 (D) Portugal 0 - 0 Sweden
Jun 6 2009 (W) Albania 1 - 2 Portugal
Sep 5 2009 (D) Denmark 1 - 1 Portugal

Remaining fixtures:

Sep 9 2009: Hungary v Portugal
Oct 9 2009: Portugal v Hungary
Oct 13 2009: Portugal v Malta

Seven Shades of... Cristiano Ronaldo

With Cristiano Ronaldo adding the FIFA World Player of the Year award to the billions of other prizes he's won lately, we thought we'd try and link the disturbingly orange Portuguese winger to the first winner of FIFA's ultimate accolade, Lothar Matthaeus. Impossible? Not on this website...

Cristiano Ronaldo
Currently the best player on the planet according to FIFA (and when have we ever doubted their judgement), the former Sporting Lisbon star has already achieved so much in the first 23 years of his life. He's played at two European Championships and one World Cup, won the Club World Cup with Manchester United and scored on average a goal every three games for Portugal. Not only that, but he can do fancy step-overs too - he's that good. One of the more obscure honours to be found on his CV is that he was the scorer of Man United's 1,000th Premier League goal back in 2005. Scorer of the 500th was

Andy Cole
Sorry - ANDREW Cole, a Premier League winner with United when Cristiano Ronaldo was only eleven years old. Cole will forever be remembered as the hotshot striker who helped Newcastle United scale new heights in the early 90's before moving onto Man U and Blackburn. Before and after that peak time in his career, you might have found Andy (sorry) at any number of other clubs including Burnley, Arsenal and Bristol City, but life on the road for the Nottingham-born striker appears to be at an end now since he announced his retirement in November 2008. Strangely enough for someone who was the Premier League's top scorer in 1994, Cole only ever scored once for England, a record he shares with

Rodney Marsh
whose only England goal came in a 3-0 Home International match in Cardiff in May 1972. That was the year when Marsh was at the peak of his goal scoring capabilities, having banged in 106 goals in 211 games for QPR. There was no doubt that Marsh's goals helped the Loftus Road club rise from the old Third Division to the First during the time he was there, but by 1972 he was hot property. Snapped up by Manchester City (the Kaka of his day, if you will), Marsh couldn't replicate his QPR goal ratio and thereafter left for the Tampa Bay Rowdies with whom he played in two separate spells. Another former Rowdie is

Sam Allardyce
who left for Tampa after a promising start to his career at Bolton and Sunderland. Having played for nine different clubs in nineteen years by 1991, he got his first taste of management while still a player at Limerick in the Republic of Ireland. A switch in roles proved to be a shrewd move as he helped the club to a League of Ireland title in 1992, but this didn't stop him moving to Preston the following season to work on the coaching staff before eventually becoming full-time manager at Blackpool in 1994, Notts County in 1997 and Bolton in 1999. Big Sam developed a reputation for achieving success wherever he managed, but this came to an end following a brief, disappointing spell as head of Newcastle United where he followed

Glenn Roeder
in the hot seat. Roeder, like Marsh, had some success while playing at Queens Park Rangers (where he captained the side in the 1982 FA Cup Final), but in a managerial sense things haven't always been so good. When at Watford, Newcastle United and Norwich City, he was able to stave off the threat of relegation and push the team up the table before a return to bad form saw them plummet back down the table and he was fired. With Gillingham, Burnley and West Ham, he did away with the need for a recovery period and went straight for one long plummet down the table before being fired. No matter - as a player he can look back on happier days with QPR and Newcastle, the latter of which he also captained after

Kevin Keegan
had held the position prior to his retirement from football in 1984. 'King Kev' was a football legend long before he ever set foot on Tyneside, thanks in no small part to the UEFA Cup and European Cup wins he'd had with Liverpool and the European Footballer of the Year awards he picked up in 1978 and 1979 while with Hamburg. A true embodiment of all that was good about English football back then, he never did enjoy major success while playing for the national team in a ten-year international career. The closest he got was when England reached the last twelve of the 1982 World Cup, a competition he largely missed through injury. His only appearance was in his team's last game against Spain on July 5th 1982, six days after England's penultimate match against West Germany which Keegan watched from the bench just like

Lothar Matthaeus
who was doing likewise for the opposing team. As Keegan's international career was ending, however, Matthaeus found his was just beginning and it would go on to feature more honours than most players could even dream of. A European Championship winner in 1980 and a World Cup winner in 1990, Matthaeus also reached the heights in his club career too. He won the Bundesliga seven times between 1985 and 2000 with Bayern Munich, Serie A once with Inter and the UEFA Cup twice (once for each team). To top all that off, the legendary German midfielder even won the inaugural FIFA World Player of the Year award in 1991 - an honour only bestowed upon twelve other people... the latest of which, you'll remember, is Cristiano Ronaldo.

And there you have it - The Seven Shades of Cristiano Ronaldo via Glenn Roeder and Rodney Marsh, to name but two. A journey worth embarking upon, we hope you'll agree.

Ronaldo to break his silence this week?

Madrid don't seem to take no for an answer but then again why should they? Year after year they make a sly approach for a player, claiming that said player wants to join only to be told that they will be taken to FIFA - which, let's face it never happens - before the player signs on the dotted line for the Spanish outfit.

It's old news now that the same is happening this Summer and the superstar in Madrid's sights is Manchester United's Cristiano Ronaldo.

Ronaldo's manager Sir Alex Ferguson has already come out and used the usual 'hands off' approach to the situation and claimed that indeed FIFA will be involved but those pesky so-and-so's at Real are reluctant to let the matter drop.

Real President, Roman Calderon relishes mind-games as much as Ferguson and this week told the BBC that,

"We know they [United] aren't a selling club. It is a problem between player and team", hinting that perhaps a rift is becoming apparent between the Portuguese star and his current club.

United are keen not to let Ronaldo leave, however, and after firing them to a Premier League and Champions League double you wouldn't expect anything less.

The heat has certainly been turned up on the situation especially as it seems that Madrid believe Ronaldo will sign, leading Ferguson to hold a meeting with United's owners, the Glazer family.

This is where the story becomes a little more interesting and where Ronaldo may begin to feel that he is stuck in the middle of real power struggle over one of the games biggest assets.

Following his meeting with the Glazer's, Ferguson came out and said that their stance on the matter is clear:

"They'd sit a player in the stand ... absolutely no doubt about it, just to prove a point"

His fury is clear to see, he claims that the Glazer's attitude towards Real's approach is 'To hell with them', but what about Ronaldo's? After all he is in the middle of this tussle and has been somewhat left without a say in the matter.

Well, according to reports Ronaldo will be ready to clear up the whole situation as to where he would like to be playing next season but whether it will be the Premiership or La Liga really is anyone's guess, but the extent to which Ronaldo has been silent on the matter could hint at a dramatic revelation before the end of the week.

Cristiano recently signed a new contract with the Red Devils tying him down at Old Trafford until 2012 meaning that if Madrid really were going to go 'all in' for the winger, United would demand an astronomical fee for his transfer. Figures in the region of £80 million were rumoured to be the asking price for Barcelona's Lionel Messi after Chelsea were linked with the wonderkid recently and it would be no surprise to see United asking for an even greater sum for Ronaldo.

The winger himself has been busy preparing with the Portugal side ahead of their Euro 2008 campaign and if in the coming days it is to be revealed that Ronaldo will leave, his final game could not have been on a bigger stage, heading the opening goal in United's ultimately triumphant Champions League encounter with Chelsea last month.

You Bet - FA Cup Final Special... Update

Well the votes have been counted and with 50% of the total amount cast, the winner was Bet B - Cristiano Ronaldo to be the first goalscorer, so that's what we'll be putting our £5 bet on today.

Second most popular choice with 38% of the vote was Bet C - Wayne Rooney being the first recipient of a card during today's Cup Final, and in last place with 13% of the vote was Bet A - a draw at half-time and full-time.

All we need do now is sit back and wait for the action to begin. Can you believe you'll actually be wanting Ronaldo to score for once...?