Nine minutes. That is how long it took Cristiano Ronaldo to remind everyone why he was still on the team sheet.
Ronaldo scored twice as Portugal beat Uzbekistan 5-0 at NRG Stadium in Houston on June 23, 2026, in their Group K match at the World Cup. He opened the scoring in the sixth minute and added a second in the 39th, either side of a Nuno Mendes free kick and bracketing an own goal and a late Rafael Leao strike that turned a routine win into a rout.
Portugal beat Uzbekistan 5-0. Ronaldo scored in the 6th and 39th minutes, Mendes added a free kick goal in the 17th, Abduvohid Nematov turned the ball into his own net in the 60th, and Leao finished things off in the 87th. Five days earlier, Portugal had limped to a 1-1 draw with DR Congo, and the questions about Ronaldo’s tournament had already started.
He answered them inside six minutes.
Joao Cancelo did the hard part, bursting down the right and cutting the ball back, and Ronaldo did what he has done in six different World Cups now, no other player in the competition’s history has managed that, sliding it home first time at the near post. It was the kind of goal that looks simple because the run before it was not.
The number that mattered more came thirty-three minutes later. Bruno Fernandes, his old Manchester United teammate, split the Uzbekistan defense with a throughball during a fast break, and Ronaldo did not need a second touch. He slid it into the bottom-left corner to make it 3-0, and the goal carried weight beyond the scoreline. It made him Portugal’s all-time leading World Cup scorer with ten goals, ahead of Eusebio, a record that had stood since 1966.
Here’s the thing none of this should have been a surprise, except it kind of was. Ronaldo had gone thirteen major tournament appearances without scoring outside of penalties, firing in forty-two shots worth 4.5 expected goals across that stretch and getting nothing for it. Two goals in one night against Uzbekistan did not erase that run, but it did interrupt it, loudly.
Make no mistake, the opposition mattered here. Uzbekistan are tournament debutants who entered this match with a defense already torn open by Colombia, and Roberto Martinez’s side carved through them with 2.61 expected goals to Uzbekistan’s 0.24. Ronaldo himself had a hand in much of that gap, finishing the night with seven shots, five on target, and 1.60 expected goals from his own efforts. Only twice before in his World Cup career, against Brazil in 2010 and Ghana in 2014, has he managed more attempts in a single game.
There was a moment Uzbekistan will replay with more pain than anything Portugal did. Azizjon Ganiev smashed a effort from twenty-five yards into the top corner in the 29th minute, the kind of strike that should define a player’s tournament. VAR chalked it off for a foul in the buildup. It remained 2-0.
Ronaldo was not finished trying to add a third goal of his own. He forced a save from Nematov in the 74th minute and saw a stoppage-time effort waved offside, the closest he came to a hat-trick that never arrived. It did not matter. Leao, on as a substitute, swept in a deflected pass in the 87th minute to make it 5-0 and put a number on the scoreline that fully matched the gap between these two teams.
Strip away the noise and what is left is simple. A 41-year-old who had not scored in a major tournament for thirteen straight appearances found the net twice in one night, against a team that gave him room to do it. Portugal move on to face Colombia in their final group game with their campaign back on track. Uzbekistan, already eliminated in all but mathematics, face DR Congo knowing this scoreline will follow them home.
He has scored in six World Cups now. Nobody else in the history of the tournament can say that, and at 41, he made sure nobody forgot it.