So Portugal are not a one man team after all. On a sultry night in the Mordovia Arena, this dramatic draw with Iran meant Fernando Santos’s side progressed to the knock-out stage where they will face Uruguay. But it was done without any meaningful contribution from Cristiano Ronaldo, the man who defines them. Indeed, not only did Portugal’s captain and talisman have a penalty saved, he should have been sent off after the VAR noticed that he had thrust a sly elbow into the face of Morteza Pouraliganji. But, after consulting his pitchside screen, the referee flourished only a yellow card.

“Why?” demanded the incandescent Iran manager Carlos Queiroz. “The rules don’t say if it is Messi or Ronaldo it is only a little bit of an elbow. It is a red card. What is the difference between an elbow by Cristiano Ronaldo and everyone else? Is his a half elbow?”

But the truth is, if it was not Ronaldo’s night, it wasn’t Iran’s either. Despite the most dramatic of late comebacks, they have played their last in Russia 2018. And it is to the detriment of the tournament that their tens of thousands fans, with their incessant enthusiasm and their relentless parping of horns, are now going home. How they contributed. And at the last, how they suffered in Saransk.

For Iran the problem was that mathematics insisted they win. The draw they somehow engineered, deserved as it was, was never sufficient. Theirs is a side set up to defend, a side who had sparked Spain’s ire earlier in the tournament with their ten man defensive line. And they began this game once again more concerned with the opposition than with themselves. Mind, when the opposition contains Ronaldo it pays to be attentive.

And no one was more motivated to stop him than Queiroz. Once the would-be GOAT was his protege but since they fell out dramatically on World Cup duty in South Africa in 2010, he has turned into his nemesis. Studiously avoiding him in the tunnel before the game, Queiroz had sought to stop Ronaldo’s forward surges by stationing Saeid Ezatolahi in front of the back four, to act as a barrier against Portuguese assault through the middle.