Cristiano Ronaldo (AFP)

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Comment: Rob Houwing, Sport24 chief writer

Cape Town – Where was Cristiano Ronaldo in Portugal’s hour of greatest need?

It is a question most of his home country and millions of surprised neutral football followers will be asking after their unfathomably flaccid 1-0 exit from the World Cup at the hands of Iberian foes Spain in the round of 16 on Tuesday here.

For all the hype around this supposed dream match-up, featuring the second- and third-ranked sides in the world, Portugal somehow seemed to miss the bus to the races.

And their captain, it must be said, appeared notably more tardy than most of his colleagues in lighting a personal fire on a chilly Cape winter’s night.

Ronaldo, the world’s highest-paid footballer, drifted with indifference through this match, made half-decent only by Spain’s increasing comfort on the ball and ability to boss it to a near-ludicrous extent even as Portugal were chasing the game – at least that’s what you might have anticipated their doing with some gusto -- following the electric David Villa’s 63rd-minute strike.

There were two No 7s on the park but Spain’s, who took his goal tally to four from as many appearances at this tournament, was the altogether more purposeful one. Ronaldo? He just seemed to do an awful lot more walking than running, an animal out of its habitat with no-one quite sure why or how.

I noticed on BBC Sport that former Germany striker Jurgen Klinsmann gave him a sympathetic verdict: “It must have been so frustrating for Ronaldo; he had no service and no goalscoring chances.”

That was overly generous: Ronaldo is a sprightly, athletic 25, has a prior history of putting himself about like a Duracell bunny, and there seemed no reason, as Portugal took more and more obvious strain in midfield, for him not to drop back from his position too high up the pitch to do some old-fashioned scrapping for the ball.

A few admittedly deft touches and much raising of his arms or shaking of his head, often to nobody in particular, was about the grand sum of the Real Madrid poster boy’s contribution to Portugal’s elimination.

Was this really the same player who, dropping his magazine-cover pout for some welcome natural smiles at times, had been so dynamic in his country’s earlier appearance at the same venue, plucking beautiful second-half strings in the 7-0 group-stage rout of North Korea?

That performance, I thought, was enough to raise Ronaldo’s World Cup just about higher in usefulness than, say, that of the other half of the revered former “Roonaldo” alliance for Manchester United -- England’s horribly out-of-sorts striker Wayne Rooney.

On Tuesday, though, he did a lot to drag it right back down.

And any chance to restore his reputation to more satisfactory levels on the most distinguished stage of them all has frittered away for another four years …