Cristiano Ronaldo is done with international football. The Portugal captain said on Thursday that he is retiring from the national team, closing out a 23-year career in a five-minute video posted on X.
Now 41, he began with the shirt itself, the No. 7 that became his trademark. “To the Portuguese, the day has come to return the number 7 jersey of our national team, a national team that belongs to all of us,” he said. “I never felt it was exclusively mine.”
The decision was not an easy one, he said. Some decisions are not taken only with the head. They are taken with the heart as well.
The record book will miss him. Nobody has played more games for a national team — 234, in Ronaldo’s case — and nobody has scored more goals for one either, 146 in all. Portugal’s European Championship title of 2016 came with him leading the side, and so did the Nations League wins of 2019 and 2025. He was still at it in June, becoming the first player to score at six World Cups.
That run started back in August 2003. Looking back over all of it, Ronaldo said, the matches and the trophies are not what come to mind first. People do.
“I see immigrants who, for 90 minutes, felt Portugal a little closer,” Ronaldo said. Millions of Portuguese he has never met became part of his life all the same. “Football is much bigger than a game,” he said. “Football is the people.”
Ronaldo said he spent those years trying to get past his own limits. Winning mattered to him. So did being the best, and making a little history along the way. He drove himself hard. Every season he wanted more, convinced Portugal could go further than most people believed, and he held nothing back when he pulled the shirt on.
Some afternoons and nights were perfect, and some wins will never leave him. Some defeats still sting when he thinks of them. He made mistakes in a Portugal shirt, too, and he went through spells when things went badly for him. On other days the goal his country needed simply would not come. “But I never gave up,” he said. “And above all, I never stopped feeling pride in representing Portugal.”
What time cannot erase
Goals pass, he said. Trophies sit in museums, and records do not last either — somebody always comes along and breaks them. A player’s place in people’s hearts is another matter. Time cannot rub that out.
One goal, one hug between two fans, one worry forgotten for an evening, one flash of pride in the country — if his football ever did any of that for anyone, Ronaldo said, the journey was worth every bit of it. “Because being Portuguese is also that,” he said. “We suffer together, we rise together. We believe again.”
Portugal, he said, will always need kids who dream and players who will not quit, new generations convinced they can get to places nobody has reached. A country that keeps finding new heroes, in his view, never stops believing in itself.
Then he turned to the players who shared the shirt with him. He thanked them for the running they did and the embraces after goals — for the rows, too, and for those quiet minutes before kickoff. The wins they celebrated together mattered to him. So did the defeats, because those made the group tougher. Captaining them, he said, was a privilege — and no captain, he added, walks alone.
Behind the players stood another team altogether — coaches, officials, doctors, physiotherapists, kit men and staff who worked beside him across the 23 years. Ronaldo pointed out that most of those faces never appear in any photograph. Take them away, he said, and the photographs would not exist.
His family heard a more personal message. He thanked them for sharing the dream, and for understanding the absences, the sacrifices and the times the national team took up a space that belonged to them too. If he got this far, he said, it is because they always walked hand in hand.
One passion: Portugal
For Portuguese fans spread across the world, Ronaldo described the image he will carry with him for the rest of his life. It comes in the moment the national anthem starts.
He looks around, he said, and sees his teammates and the stands. He sees children, mothers, fathers and grandparents, and Portuguese who travelled from far away just to be in the stadium. For those few minutes, he said, the differences disappear. There are no clubs, no colours, no classes, no professions and no opinions.
“There is only one passion: Portugal.”
“Today my journey on the pitch with the national team ends,” Ronaldo said. “I leave with my head held high, with pride in the path I took, and with the awareness that I gave everything I had for Portugal.”
He will not drift away from the team. He promised to keep suffering with its supporters, cheering it on and celebrating every Portugal victory, ending those celebrations with a “siu” of his own. All his life, he said, he worked toward one thing — to be the best player in the world. Yet the honour he puts above everything is plainer than that: he earned the right to represent the best country in the world, and he called that his greatest victory.
His last words were thanks. Thanks for 23 years, for the faith the Portuguese showed in him, and for a dream that began with a boy in Madeira running after a ball. The number 7 shirt stays behind, he said. The pride of having worn it will be his forever.
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