As Cristiano reaches his twilight years, moving to the Saudi league, and having the chance to add to his legacy by being one of the biggest factors that a country like Saudi winning the bid of hosting the World Cup in 2030, and a chance to win new titles that at least won't harm his career, there seems a lot of his fans spreading beliefs that Cristiano is the sole purpose behind Portugal's new status as one of the most talent-stacked nations in the world.

I still share the stance that no player could carry a team, be that Maradona, Pele, or even Messi, Cristiano is no different. So, when people share random soundbites like how Portugal never won a title before Cristiano but have after him, it rubs me the wrong way as it takes away from the likes of Pepe, Eder, and many players, but most importantly, it takes away from the real people behind Portugal's football revolution.

If you spent enough time on the internet, then you must have seen versions of this photo

[Many football accounts have used a variation of this image, but I created this one myself on MemeGenerator]

That stupid is one of the dumbest things I have ever seen in football because while Cristiano does play a role of being an inspiration to many players in Portugal, he's far from being the one to credit the most for its football revolution. There are many others who played a bigger role, this includes Cristiano's agent, Jorge Mendes, more on that later in the post. The fact is, Portugal's revolution started way before Cristiano became the top star he is today. The beginning of Portugal's revolution started with another Portuguese legendary name

José Mário dos Santos Mourinho

Mourinho brought a style to coaching that barely existed before him and was popularized thanks to him, the style of extensively studying your opponents, providing papers for players to study and football periodization which works on ensuring that your players are on top form when the most crucial times came about. It involved science and statistics. It seems normal now, but we're talking about something that was happening with Mourinho 20 years ago.

Mourinho's style of analyzing opponents, studying coaching at a university, and rising through the ranks wasn't that popular as clubs usually resorted to ex-players serving as coaches. Mourinho served as an inspiration for coaches and clubs to operate, chasing results rather than just top names and hoping for the best. I wrote all about that here

Mourinho started the Mourinho-logy, a style of defensive solidity that was copied intensively in Portugal which is how the Portuguese revolution started as clubs started to copy his style. That resulted in another school in Portugal doing the opposite.

Benfica

As rivals of Porto, Benfica couldn't just sit back and copy them, but rather went to the other side of creating a more offensive style, quick football with tactics to break down defensive teams. To garner that style, you needed talent in a country with around 10 million people in total. That started Benfica's excellent talent scouting program which even included rewarding regular fans and people in general who had access to the club's scouting teams to tell them about talents.

Benfica even made people part of their scouting system, this partly extended to other clubs. It's a whole process that ensured that if there was a talented kid in the middle of nowhere in Portugal, odds are he'd be found and recruited, whether by Benfica or any other clubs. Portuguese knew they had to work with local talents and not waste them because they knew that it was a matter of time before other clubs approached the talented kids.

I also wrote about that aspect here which included how clubs created complicated systems to train while having poor instructions that they'd often have around 6 teams occupying one pitch at a time. Note that during every mentioned above, Cristiano hasn't even won or been close to winning his first Ballon d'Or. So, to minimize all of that to just say that Cristiano is the reason Portugal reached its greatness is an idiotic statement as it ignores the work of thousands of people. That includes Cristiano's own agent

Jorge Mendes

All of the things mentioned above wouldn't have been half as effective without a good agency marketing these players and negotiating on their behalf to ensure that clubs like Benfica, Porto, Sporting, and the rest would get a good return for investing so much in the football infrastructure inside the country and scouting. Mendes made sure that all of the scouting and work proved fruitful, as I point out here.

In fact, the photo shown above included three of Mendes' clients. Mendes' agency, GESTIFUTE, has a market value of 1.26 billion. The agency had even created its own annual award, Globe Soccer Awards, so when we talk about Cristiano, as great as he is, as being even a pillar in this system, is a disservice to all of these people and their work, as well as a disservice to logic.

In Conclusion

Context matters. I know that fanboys, whether of Messi, Cristiano, or any other players want to make their players look bigger and greater than they really are. But, there's no shame in just being among the best players without adding fake and made-up value. Cristiano didn't play any significant part in Portgual's revolution, in fact, he was lucky enough to be there by the time these people's work proved fruitful

All the young players in Portugal had clubs who scouted and trained them, then made space for them in the first team to shine, with agents who ensured these clubs' efforts won't go to waste. All of that had nothing to do with Cristiano. So, no, Cristiano didn't start Portugal's football revolution, he was merely a beneficiary of it.