Portugal captain, Cristiano Ronaldo, has said the ongoing European Championship in Germany would be his last.<\/p>\n
Ronaldo led Portugal to the quarter-finals after seeing off Slovenia 3-0 on penalties following a 0-0 draw in regulation time.
\nThe Al Nassr star saw his penalty kicked saved by Jan Oblak in the early part of extra-time and bursted in tears.<\/p>\n
He, however, made amends as he stepped up to convert the first spot kick in the shootout as Diogo Costa made his saves.
\n\u201cIt\u2019s definitely the last Euros, of course. But I\u2019m not moved by that, I\u2019m moved by everything that football involves, by the enthusiasm I have for the game, the enthusiasm I see from the fans, my family here, the passion of the people, the affection they have for me, my teammates themselves,\u201d Ronaldo said.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s not because I\u2019m leaving football, because Cristiano needs to do more or what he needs to win more? It\u2019s not going to be about one more point or one less point, the most important thing about this journey I\u2019ve been on is the enthusiasm I still have to be here. 20 years with the national team and playing, bringing joy to people, your family, your children, that\u2019s what motivates me the most.\u201d<\/p>\n
The 2016 Euro champions will take on France in the quarter-finals.
\nThis is a repeat of the 2016 final which Portugal won 1-0 thanks to Eder\u2019s extra-time goal.<\/p>\n
Speaking ahead of the last four clash Ronaldo added:\u201dWe now have a difficult game against France, who are the favourites to win the competition along with Germany and Spain, but we\u2019re going to war, this is football, the team is doing well, this was a boost of energy that the team had today and we\u2019re going to fight until the end.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019ll always give my best for this shirt, whether I miss it or not. And I\u2019ll do this my whole life, I\u2019ve been doing this for 20 years, as you saw I missed the penalty but I wanted to be the first to score, but you have to take responsibility when the team has to.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou can\u2019t be afraid, I\u2019ve never been afraid to face things head on, sometimes I get it right, sometimes I don\u2019t, but giving up is something you\u2019ll never hear from me.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Portugal captain, Cristiano Ronaldo, has said the ongoing European Championship in Germany would be his last. Ronaldo led Portugal to the quarter-finals after seeing off Slovenia 3-0 on penalties following a 0-0 draw in regulation time. The Al Nassr star saw his penalty kicked saved by Jan Oblak in the early part of extra-time and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":18,"featured_media":37039,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[175],"tags":[1067,348],"class_list":["post-37038","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-sports","tag-euro-2024","tag-ronaldo"],"aioseo_notices":[],"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37038","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/18"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=37038"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37038\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":37040,"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37038\/revisions\/37040"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/37039"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=37038"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=37038"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=37038"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}