For Portugal, the Euro 2024 journey has come to an early end. For players like B Fei and B who are in their playing years, it is a pity that they cannot go further. After all, there is not much left of their prime. But what is even more regrettable is the center forward Gonzalo Ramos, who plays for the Ligue 1 giants Paris. In this European Championship, he only played 24 minutes as a substitute, and the rest of the time was on the sidelines.
Last season, Gonzalo Ramos, who joined Paris for €65 million, played 40 games in all competitions, including 14 goals and one assist in 21 starts. Although there is a significant drop from his final season at Benfica, with 27 goals and 5 assists in 43 games, this performance is reasonable considering the overall level gap between the Portuguese Super League and Ligue 1.
However, on his first trip to the European Championships, Gonzalo Ramos suffered a waterloo. The main center forward position of the Portuguese team will always belong to the 39-year-old Ronaldo. Even in the third round of the group stage, the Portuguese team, which had already won 2 games and 2 wins to lock the top spot in the group in advance, still chose to let Ronaldo start. It was in that game that Gonzalo Ramos played 24 minutes in place of Cristiano Ronaldo in the second half and made his European Championship debut. However, it was also his only appearance at this tournament.
After Portugal lost to France on penalties, many people on the Internet supported Ronaldo, which was nothing more than "no one in Portugal is on top of Ronaldo" and "Portugal's young people are embarrassed". However, Gonzalo Ramos, Diogo Jota and others on the bench are not a stunt. The former even scored a hat-trick plus 1 assist in the quarterfinals of the 2022 World Cup, which is a blockbuster. However, against France, neither player got a chance to play even a single minute.
In fact, Portugal have played to the extreme tactically in this game, and if they had a young striker up front, they might have won France. However, the strange idea of "playing with the leader" made Portugal play one less man almost from the first minute. Cristiano Ronaldo's achievements are undoubted, and his willpower and strong desire for glory have made him a superstar of a generation on a par with Messi. At the age of 39, he seems extremely incompatible and impure in this Portuguese team. To put it bluntly, the current Portuguese national team is not football at all, but pure human sophistication. Gonzalo Ramos, who has been reduced to a marginal person, is a victim of this kind of human football.