SAINT-DENIS, France -- Cristiano Ronaldo will have dreamed of this moment for years. He has won almost everything there is to win for his clubs, but he had never won anything for his nation. Even in his strangest dreams, he could never have imagined that it would happen for him this way.
This is not how Ronaldo usually wins. Ronaldo usually wins with well-struck shots or sublime subtlety like that back-heel against Hungary. He wins when he endures the sort of pressure that crushes ordinary men like tin cans. But he had never won from the technical area, arms aloft, directing his players through the last stages of a lung-busting cup final prior to Sunday.
A glimpse into the future? Ronaldo the manager? Probably not. He will need neither the money nor the stress. But here he was, injured and exhausted, channelling every thing he had, every last ounce of personality and celebrity, all in the hope that it might make some kind of difference on the pitch. And perhaps it did.
Asked afterward if he felt that this was the high point of his career, he agreed. "I always say I win everything in terms of clubs, then as individual, but I always say I never win something for Portugal," he said. "But I win tonight. I'm so happy, it's a moment I cannot describe.
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