Portugal coach Jorge Jesus has left the door open for Cristiano Ronaldo to come back to the national team, insisting the decision now rests entirely with the player after his abrupt walkout from the squad last week.
Jesus spoke on Sunday, after Portugal beat Norway 2-1 in Lisbon to become the first side through to the Nations League quarter-finals. The 41-year-old Ronaldo was not in the squad for that match, having left the camp during the international window.
“For me, Cris, in the next call-up, if he’s playing at Al-Nassr, he’ll be a player who can be called up,” Jesus told reporters, referring to Ronaldo’s Saudi club. “If he wants to, he’ll return to the national team.”
The friction began earlier in the window. Ronaldo started Portugal’s opening fixture but was left as an unused substitute away to Norway on 27 September. He then departed the camp after being told he would not start against Denmark, missing both that game and Sunday’s return against Norway.
Portugal managed without him. The defending champions won 4-2 in Denmark on 1 October and followed it with Sunday’s victory, sealing a perfect start to Jesus’s tenure and a quarter-final place with two group games still to play.
Jesus said he was ready to speak to Ronaldo again before Portugal’s next matches in November if the forward wanted that conversation. “If he wants to, as we did before this call-up, we talked before the call-up, we can talk before the next call-up,” he said. “But Cris is the one who’s going to decide.”
The coach was keen to frame Ronaldo’s international future as the player’s to settle, not his. “Cristiano should end his time in the national team the way he wants, he’s the one who will decide how he wants it,” Jesus said.
He also recalled the message he gave Ronaldo on taking the job. “That’s how we talked, the two of us. I said, ‘I need you’. In my first call-up, I said, ‘I need you, I need you to be close to me, playing or not playing, I need you’. And now I’m saying the same thing.”
The 72-year-old Jesus took over in July after Roberto Martinez stepped down following Portugal’s exit from the 2026 World Cup. The appointment reunited him with Ronaldo, whom he coached at Al-Nassr, and he named the forward in his first 25-man squad for the current run of fixtures.
Ronaldo remains central to Portugal’s record books. He is the country’s all-time leading scorer and most-capped player, made his debut in 2003 at the age of 18, and has featured at six World Cups across more than two decades with the senior side. He has said this will “probably” be his final year in football.
His absence has not derailed a Portugal team that looks to be rebuilding its attack around a younger core, with Goncalo Ramos leading the line in Lisbon on Sunday. The win left the holders well clear at the top of their group heading into November.
The episode arrives at a moment when the game’s two defining figures of the past generation are reaching their endings. Ronaldo’s long-time rival, Lionel Messi, is set to play his final match for Argentina on home soil, a friendly against Benin in Buenos Aires on Tuesday.
For now, the question of whether Ronaldo pulls on the Portugal shirt again is unresolved, and by Jesus’s account it will stay that way until the player decides. The next squad announcement, due before the November fixtures, will be the first real test of whether the coach’s open invitation is taken up.