The retaliatory elbow turned red! The 40-year-old Cristiano Ronaldo was severely hit: he may be suspended for 3 games by FIFA and miss the first 2 rounds of the World Cup

In a focus match in the fifth round of Group F of the European World Cup qualifiers that ended on November 14, Portugal lost an upset 0-2 to Ireland in an away game and missed the opportunity to qualify one round in advance. In this game, the 40-year-old Portuguese superstar Ronaldo received a retaliatory elbow in the second half, earning him the first red card in his national team career.

This scene happened in the 63rd minute of the game. At that time, Portugal was already 0-2 behind. Ronaldo, who was a little impatient, was dissatisfied with his opponent's defensive actions when fighting for position in the penalty area during the attack, and directly elbowed the Irish player in retaliation, and the Irish player immediately fell to the ground in pain.

At first, the referee just showed Ronaldo a yellow card, but VAR intervened and the referee personally checked the replay and chose to send Ronaldo off. As a result, after playing 226 times for the national team, Ronaldo received the first red card in his national team career.

What makes Ronaldo even more frustrated is that Saudi sports lawyer Mansour revealed that Ronaldo was sent off for elbowing an opponent and received a red card, which is a violent act. According to the rules, FIFA will impose a penalty of at least three game suspensions.

This also means that Ronaldo will not only miss the home finale of the final round of the World Cup preliminaries, but will also continue to be suspended from the group stage of next year's US-Canada-Mexico World Cup.

If Portugal directly advances to the World Cup, Ronaldo will miss Portugal's first two games in the 2026 World Cup. If the second place in the group advances, Ronaldo will miss the play-offs due to suspension.

Judging from the current qualifying situation, Portugal has a high probability of winning in the final round to secure qualification without playing the play-offs. This also means that Ronaldo's last World Cup will most likely get off to a rocky start, and he will have to miss at least the first two rounds of the group stage, which is undoubtedly a big blow to Portugal.