As the Uefa Nations League weekender rolls on from Friday into Tuesday it is hard not to luxuriate a little in the glow of international football, to feel fuzzy and loved-up still from that sun-bleached World Cup. The Nations League has been criticised for its fiddly nature but whatever the background noise there is an undying grandeur to these games. Netherlands v Germany remains one of the great European retro-hate matches, and on Monday night Spain, still stung from the summer, still effortlessly talented, will host England in Andalusia.

There is one significant absence from this spectacle. Cristiano Ronaldo did not play for Portugal against Poland, nor will he in Sunday’s friendly against Scotland. Officially Ronaldo is being rested. Unofficially he is mounting his defence, public and legal, to allegations of rape and physical assault.

Ronaldo vigorously denies anything non-consensual occurred eight years ago in Las Vegas. And for the last 10 days since Der Spiegel published its report into allegations first made by Kathryn Mayorga in 2009 this has felt like the biggest story in sport that may or may not be a sport story at all; something that demands a different set of analytical tools, which stomps right across the issues of sexual politics, consent and the law, the movement to change this global dynamic for good.

Already at least one Guardian sport reader has asked why the Ronaldo story isn’t on the front page every day, why it doesn’t fill the skies, drowning out everything else. The simple answer is that everyone is waiting to see what happens next. A police investigation is under way. This remains an accusation and everyone accused of anything is innocent right up until due process decides otherwise. It is vital this principle is maintained, not least at a time of fudged facts, mob-verdict and post-truth gerrymandering by the powerful.

Andre Silva (centre) celebrates after scoring Portugal’s opening goal in a 3-2 Nations League win against Poland in Chorzow – a game Ronaldo missed. Photograph: Andrzej Grygiel/EPA

So much for the simple answer. The more complex, and more honest answer is that this is also a frightening, hugely discomfiting prospect. However bogus and deluded it might be, we grow attached to these marvels of the public circus, wallow in phoney intimacy, uplifted by their triumphs and bruised by their failings.

On the day the alleged assault took place Ronaldo was celebrating signing for Real Madrid. This remains the most significant transfer in football history, a move that would help earn him £400m, initiate an era-defining mega-rivalry, and leave the Ronaldo visage imprinted for posterity across every platform, part of the inner life of everyone who knows and cares what football is.

And so this didn’t really feel like a football story. Until now, and a week when football itself began to show its face at the fringes. This is not about events in Las Vegas. Nobody knows what happened in that hotel suite apart from the people who were there. Right now there is literally no point in having an opinion about it.

It is instead the noises off, the gear-shifts of the Ronaldo-industrial complex that feel like a kind of defeat right now, another kind of guilt, another kind of ugliness. It felt like a sport story after Ronaldo’s own response this week, the leveraging of his vast public profile, which is constructed entirely out of football, to aggressively dismiss his accuser. Der Spiegel says it has documents that appear to show Ronaldo admitting Mayorga said “no” and “stop” during intercourse, prima facie evidence of a lack of consent. On Wednesday Ronaldo’s lawyers said a cyber hacker obtained his statement and doctored it; Der Spiegel replied it had no reason to believe the documents were not authentic.

What is graceless and unnecessary is the tone here, parrotted by friendly voices in the Italian media, with the suggestion his accuser is not mistaken or incorrect but cruel. This felt more like a sport story as footballing corners of the internet continued to seethe with unpleasant talk about Ronaldo’s female accuser, the predictable character attacks, the sleazy sneers, a response Ronaldo’s own tone will have helped to foster. Rape is an under-reported crime. For female victims just taking on the process can be a terrifying, humiliating experience. Looking at the deep-male, sweaty-palmed CR7-supremacist talk swirling about it isn’t hard to see why; and to wonder too about the effects of all this veneration, the muscle worship, the hair-gelled idolatry, on the world’s stocks of impressionable basement-dwelling men.

It felt ever more like a football story as Real angrily denied knowing about Ronaldo’s out-of-court settlement with Mayorga, something they will presumably want to take up with their former highest-paid employee. And even more so as Juventus, one of Europe’s great sporting institutions, voiced its own corporate opinion on the potential trauma suffered by an unemployed 35-year-old teacher. Events “allegedly dating back almost 10 years” could not cloud the “professionalism … of a great champion,” a club statement read, with a weird suggestion the passing of time is the real issue here. But then Juventus have gambled hugely, spending £300m over the course of Ronaldo’s contract in a bid to vault up into the commercial A list. Football protects its investments and, for now at least, Ronaldo is too big to fail.

What seems most likely is that this is only just starting to play itself out. The important thing from here is to judge purely on the facts; to watch where the pieces fall; and if circumstance dictates, to be ready to just let it all burn.