It was always going to be all about him. And world sport’s youngest-looking old stager knew just how to take his curtain call.
Aged 41, Cristiano Ronaldo has experienced most things in football. He has long been adept at timing a run, and he did it to perfection for Al Nassr on Thursday night in Riyadh.
A plucky fightback from relegation-bound Damac on the final night of the season was all that stood between them and the Saudi Pro League title.
With the game delicately poised, its most luminous star ended the debate with two goals in the space of 18 minutes.
Cue scenes that were so epic, they might even have been worth the outlay that has been shelled on Ronaldo in his three-and-a-year stay in Riyadh. Yes, they were that compelling.
There were tears of joy this time, as he sat on the same seat in the dugout where he has shed so many in sorrow over the past three seasons.
As the referee blew the whistle to signal game, set, match, championship for Al Nassr, everyone with pitch access seemed to queue up to congratulate Ronaldo, who was by now draped in a Portugal flag.
A few days after storming off in a huff after losing to Gamba Osaka in the final of the AFC Champions League Two, now everyone was sticking around to commemorate his moment of glory. It was pure theatre.
This was delayed gratification. The guy who basically relaunched Saudi Arabian football when he arrived at the end of 2022 has had to watch while everyone else picked up its major trophies in the time since.
Clearly, he is the SPL’s most important ever player. His influence will never be matched; it is impossible to think anyone could.
Whether he is its best player, though, is possible to argue against. He has made it into the five-man list of nominees for the league’s player of the season. Obviously, he has been productive, but he still feels like a sentimental pick.
Ronaldo’s haul of 28 goals is third most in the SPL, behind Julian Quinones of Qadsiah and Al Ahli Saudi’s Ivan Toney.
His Nassr and Portugal teammate Joao Felix has 13 assists to go with 20 goals of his own, and surely did more than anyone else to end Nassr’s trophy drought.
Joao Felix is so good that Ronaldo has even largely let him take Nassr’s free-kicks most of the time this season. Endorsements hardly come better than that.
But while others might have better stats, the moments Ronaldo provides transcend anything that anyone else is capable of.
There have been two in particular. First, the goal he scored against Ahli last month.
It was a spiteful, nasty – and brilliant - game between the recently crowned two-time champions of Asia, and the Saudi Arabian champions elect.
Much had been said in the lead-up to it that was, according to Ronaldo, beyond the pale. He denied Ahli the guard of honour they might have felt they were due, given their continental exploits.
It was fierce stuff. Then Ronaldo scored the goal that settled it.
It was incredible; one of the world’s most famous people, the scorer of – at that point – 969 career goals, somehow managed to find himself unmarked in the box at the hinge point of the seminal game of the season.
It was like a Jedi mind trick, as he somehow persuaded some of the best defenders in the SPL that he was not the attacker they were looking for.
He stole in unnoticed at the near post, and glanced in a header from Joao Felix’s corner that found its way inside the far post with extraordinary precision.
Then, secondly, his free-kick against Damac with 28 minutes left in the season similarly defied logic.
Shooting from an angle to the left of the goal, the ball first evaded the two-man wall in front of him.
Then seven separate players – attackers, defenders and the goalkeeper – had a go at trying to connect with the ball. Not one of them managed to touch it, so the glory was all Ronaldo’s. Like nature intended.
Will there be an encore? In Saudi Arabian football, perhaps not. This felt like the fairy tale ending to his time there.
There is the World Cup next. Roberto Martinez, the Portugal manager, has made positive enough noises about Ronaldo to suggest he sees an important role for him in North America this summer.
Then after that? Retirement still feels out of the question, given Ronaldo still impacts games, he is edging ever nearer to the unprecedented 1,000 goal landmark, and – perhaps most importantly – he still does good numbers.
Nobody can sell a league better, so he is likely to have plenty of suitors, the most obvious apart from the SPL being Major League Soccer in the United States.
And if he does head for pastures new, Ronaldo can do so knowing that he had conquered. He achieved what he came for. Finally.
