The shirt he handed back

One · What happened

A video message, and a quarrel with the coach

The AP reported on 5 November that Ronaldo had retired from international play. He did it in a long video message on social media. He opened by telling the Portuguese people that the day had come to hand back the number seven shirt. Per the AP, he scored a hundred and forty-six goals for Portugal in two hundred and thirty-four appearances, a men’s record in both. The Portuguese federation said it felt “deep gratitude and immense admiration” and planned a tribute.

Al Jazeera put his career in the national shirt at twenty-three years. Its account of the autumn begins on 27 September. Portugal played a Nations League match in Norway that day and won it 2–1, with Ronaldo on the bench for the whole match. He had not sat out a game while fit and unsuspended since November 2024. On 30 September he left the squad’s camp before the Denmark match. In a long statement on about 6 October he said that his coach, Jorge Jesus, had broken his word to him twice over how much he would play. Jesus said Ronaldo could come back whenever he chose. At the retirement itself Ronaldo gave no particular reason beyond saying that some decisions are not made only with the head.

Two · What it is doing

What a hero’s exit does to the one watching

A reader who was eleven when Ronaldo first played for Portugal is thirty-four this autumn. The headline does the arithmetic for him. Twenty-three years is a long time to have kept up with one man. The stretch runs through the reader’s own history, with a move across the country and a funeral inside it. The grief that follows looks out of proportion to a stranger’s career, so the reader mentions it to nobody. Some of the sorrow belongs to the player who is leaving. Most of it belongs to the reader, who has just been shown how many of his own years went by while that man kept playing.

The retirement came with a quarrel attached to it. Ronaldo said in early October that Jorge Jesus had broken his word twice, and Jesus said the door was open if Ronaldo wanted it. Which of the two men kept faith is a question for the people who were in the room. A reader can watch the quarrel work on him all the same. On Ronaldo’s side a reader gets to be loyal and wronged at once. On the coach’s side he gets to be sensible and a little pleased to see a great man fall. Each has picked up a person to look down on. The looking down passes for loyalty, and nobody examines it. Anyone who has said “he broke his word to me” about somebody has a list of his own with his name on the other side of it.

The AP counted two hundred and thirty-four games in Ronaldo’s shirt. Most readers hold a shirt of their own, such as the keys to a church kitchen or a desk that has been theirs since 2009. The reader who watches him hand his back starts counting who will take his own place and how soon. Some start resenting the younger people already circling it. Others hold on harder to the keys or the desk and call the holding faithfulness. Nobody at the federation has ever met the reader, and the grief arrives in his kitchen anyway.

Three · Where the ground is

What was lent has to be handed back

“A generation goes, and a generation comes, but the earth remains forever” (Ecclesiastes 1:4). The Preacher who wrote it calls himself a king in Jerusalem, as the first verse of the book says (Ecclesiastes 1:1). He had a throne to show for his years. He watched the famous people of his city grow old, and then he watched the next ones take their places in the same seats. Following one striker for twenty-three years is a close look at that verse. Ecclesiastes promises the reader nothing that he will keep.

David asked in Psalm 15 who may stay in the Lord’s tent (Psalm 15:1). The answer is a list of ordinary conduct. One line of it concerns a promise. The man who may stay is the one “who swears to his own hurt and does not change” (Psalm 15:4). Whoever keeps repeating that a coach broke his word has a promise of his own that he let slide, a call he said he would make or a debt he said he would pay. David wrote the psalm about the man who keeps his word at a loss. He did not stop at the man who was wronged.

Paul wrote his second letter to Timothy from a Roman prison with his execution near. “For I am already being poured out as a drink offering, and the time of my departure has come” (2 Timothy 4:6). He then listed what he was giving back, and the list held a race and a faith with no shirt in it. “I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith. Henceforth there is laid up for me the crown of righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous judge, will award to me on that day” (2 Timothy 4:7–8). Paul added that the same crown goes to everyone who has loved his appearing.

“All are going to him,” John’s disciples told him about Jesus, who was baptizing across the Jordan (John 3:26). John had pointed that same man out to the crowds. John answered that the friend of the bridegroom stands and listens and rejoices at the bridegroom’s voice. “Therefore this joy of mine is now complete. He must increase, but I must decrease” (John 3:29–30). John said it to the same disciples who had come to him upset on his account. None of the Gospels records him going looking for a tribute or a crowd to replace the one he had lost.

“So teach us to number our days that we may get a heart of wisdom,” Moses prayed in Psalm 90 (Psalm 90:12). He asked God to do the counting because he could not be trusted to do it alone, and the reader is in the same position. Christ died for the sins of the man who clings to what he holds and for the man who gloats over a fall, and God raised him on the third day. “Your life is hidden with Christ in God,” Paul told the Colossians (Colossians 3:3). No retirement reaches a life that is kept there. Inside a church a believer can hear that said over a man who has just lost a title or his sight. A younger man watches an older one hand something over without bitterness.

Four · Today

Five things, and none of them are “stay informed”

Ronaldo had one shirt to hand back, and each of these five is about yours. Four of these need a pen and a phone. The fifth takes one meal with somebody from your church.

1. 01

   Pick a job you hold and set the date you will teach it to somebody.

   Choose one thing you do that would stop if you stopped, such as the Sunday school class or the family’s paperwork. Write down the name of one person who could learn it and the date of the first lesson. Put both on the calendar before you put the phone down. Paul told Timothy to entrust what he had heard to faithful men who would teach others also (2 Timothy 2:2). Ronaldo gave back one shirt after two hundred and thirty-four appearances. A job handed over while you can still stand beside the new person costs far less than one dropped on him.

2. 02

   Keep the promise you have been letting slide.

   Find the promise you made to a brother or a neighbor and have not kept. Psalm 15:4 describes the man who swears to his own hurt and does not change, and the verse puts no limit on how large the hurt can be. Do it this week at your own cost and then tell the person it is done. If the promise can’t be kept, go to him and say what you promised and did not do, then ask what would make it right.

3. 03

   Write to whoever handed something to you.

   Think of the person who taught you the trade or gave you your first chance. Write him a note by hand today naming the particular thing he handed you. Mail it, or put it in his hand. If he has died, write to his wife or his child. A federation plans a tribute for a man with a hundred and forty-six goals, while whoever taught you to read a contract has waited much longer for a thank-you.

4. 04

   Do the subtraction Psalm 90 asks for.

   On a sheet of paper write your age, then subtract it from seventy and from eighty, the two numbers in Psalm 90:10. Beside the answers write one thing you mean to spend the remaining years on and the name of one person you mean to spend them with. Then read Psalm 90:12 to somebody at your table. Ask God to teach you the counting. Moses asked God for that and did not trust himself to do it.

5. 05

   Eat with a believer twenty years ahead of you.

   Invite an older member of your church to a meal this month and ask what was handed on and what was hard to let go of. People who have already given back a classroom or a hospital shift know something about it that no headline carries. Listen for the part they got wrong, since most of them will tell you. John described that kind of joy in John 3:29. A younger believer hears it best from someone in his own church who has felt it.