Are Portugal better without Ronaldo - and is he undroppable?

Are Portugal better without Ronaldo - and is he un-droppable?Image source, Getty ImagesImage caption, Cristiano Ronaldo is about to play at his sixth World Cup for PortugalByMarcus AlvesBBC SportPublished5 minutes agoCommentsIt was the sort of friendly that could easily have slipped from memory.Played early in the season against Kazakhstan, who had only recently joined Uefa, the fixture took place in front of a sold-out crowd of just 8,000 fans and on a pitch so shabby that the grass had to be painted to improve its appearance.And yet, that narrow 1-0 win in Chaves in northern Portugal has never really faded away.That is because 20 August 2003 is the day Cristiano Ronaldo's story with the senior Portugal national team began.It would have been a stretch at the time to anticipate the boy from Madeira making his World Cup debut three years later, and entirely unrealistic to predict that he would go on to feature at a record sixth World Cup in 2026 - along with Argentina's Lionel Messi and Mexico's Guillermo Ochoa, both fellow six-timers.But Ronaldo - the all-time leading scorer in international football with 143 goals - has reinvented Portuguese football, transforming its mentality like no player before him and, most importantly, redefining what an entire nation believed was possible."We are a small country that rarely has global impact outside football," Joao Aroso, who worked with the forward both at Sporting and at the national team, told BBC Sport."Cristiano allows our small country to be known worldwide for something great - because of all the positive things he stands for."In his previous five World Cups, the superstar, now 41, always arrived with an untouchable status. It won't be different this summer, even if the scrutiny back home around his role has only intensified since Qatar 2022.For a long time, openly questioning Ronaldo's place in the team almost felt like treason. Not any more."He doesn't play to...