🚨🇵🇹 Official! Cristiano Ronaldo's statement:
"This is the truth about what happened with Jorge Jesus."
As I promised, I decided to tell, in the first person and directly, the circumstances surrounding the national team's last training camp.
After the 2026 World Cup, I prepared a letter to the Portuguese people, which I still keep, with the words I want to address to them when I finally leave our national team.
At the end of the competition, already on the flight back from the USA, the federation president asked and insisted that I reconsider the decision to leave, because the FPF wanted me to continue.
Immediately after, he asked for my opinion on the name of the current head coach, whom he was considering alongside other names he didn't reveal to me.
I told the federation president that in my opinion this would be the right choice. Therefore, on the day the current head coach was presented, I was truly happy with the choice. It was the right option, as the results confirm.
A few days later, I received a first approach from the new national team coach saying he wanted to meet me in person. I said yes and we scheduled it for the end of my holidays.
We met at the Cidade do Futebol, where my club was holding its pre-season training camp.
That day the coach told me he was counting on me and that my presence was basic to his project. He presented me, right there, with a plan for my participation. He told me I would play the first and last match, and that for physical management reasons he would always make three to four changes in each game.
At this point he raised the possibility of me not traveling with the national team to Norway and Denmark. He suggested I play the first match and stay in Portugal, then join again before the match at Dragão.
I refused this proposal immediately. It seemed clear to me that I could not accept this. It was not because I wouldn't play the away games that I stopped being our team's captain. This privilege of staying in Portugal would not be a good example.
The coach ended up agreeing with my analysis.
This conversation was attended by Simão Coutinho, Al Nassr's sporting director, the person to whom the current coach reported throughout last season and one of those responsible for his signing by the club in 2025.
On the eve of the camp's start, the coach came to my house in Lisbon, at his request, for another conversation with me. The conversation was calm and all the principles agreed upon in August were maintained. I played the match at Alvalade, and although I was substituted, I didn't make any issue out of it. I put the armband on Bruno Fernandes myself, far from imagining that I might be taking my last steps as a player and captain of the national team. What mattered to me that day was our victory. Winning is always good; in Portugal and for my country, even better.
At lunchtime on the day of the match in Norway, an assistant to the coach came to the table where the team was having lunch and informed me that the coach wanted to speak with me.
To my absolute surprise, the coach asked me if I was fit to play 30 minutes. I was completely focused on my physical recovery, integrated with my teammates as always, and thought I wouldn't play that day. Without any problem. This request was something outside my physical recovery and training plan - because I intended to play only on Wednesday at Dragão - but of course I said yes. He replied that afterwards I had to be ready because I would play 30 minutes.
The rest everyone knows. I warmed up from halftime, watched the minutes pass, and was not called.
The coach broke his word to me.