Ronaldo-Jesus dispute: Could Donald Trump help end Portugal fallout?

Cristiano Ronaldo’s departure from the Portugal squad after limited involvement under manager Jorge Jesus has dominated football discussion in the country.

Nuno Travassos, deputy editor of Portuguese newspaper A Bola, wrote an article headlined: “Trump has already called Jesus.”

Travassos said: “After the intervention of Luis Montenegro, the Portuguese prime minister, the only thing left is for Donald Trump, the president of the United States, to intervene and resolve the war within the national team. Yet it remains difficult to imagine a genuine peace agreement.”

He added: “Social media can be malicious. In recent days, I came across an article about a call Trump made to Ronaldo: ‘We need you.’”

For a moment, Travassos said, he thought the dispute had reached the White House, where Portugal’s captain had been in November 2025. However, he discovered that Trump’s appeal to Ronaldo dated back to February this year.

“Even so, it did not seem entirely far-fetched,” he wrote. “After the intervention of Portuguese prime minister Luis Montenegro, perhaps Jesus really did receive a telephone call from the president of the United States of America, the winner of the FIFA Peace Prize.”

Travassos argued that the worldwide attention surrounding the incident reflected both Ronaldo’s status in football and the seriousness of the player’s own actions.

“So far, Jorge Jesus alone has been asked to explain what happened,” he wrote. “The most important thing is still to hear Ronaldo’s version, as well as that of the president of the Portuguese Football Federation. But so far, no account has emerged that justifies the national captain leaving at a time when he was expected to be fully prepared to carry out his duties.”

He said Ronaldo’s frustration at remaining on the bench in a match he was not originally expected to play did not justify turning his back on team-mates and supporters, even after being told he would later play for 30 minutes and despite spending a long period warming up.

The incident came in Jesus’ second match as Portugal manager, although Travassos said it could have involved Jose Mourinho, Ruben Amorim or Sergio Conceicao.

Ronaldo, he added, appeared not to consider that many of his team-mates had faced the same situation, sometimes because managers were reluctant to substitute him as the indispensable star whose image dominated the occasion. “At that moment, nobody put themselves in the other person’s place, especially Cristiano, who is not used to being considered expendable,” Travassos wrote.

He said Ronaldo had made a mistake, but that his status gave him a greater margin for error. However, the captain who had so often given Portugal strength also needed to show vulnerability.

“Ronaldo continued making the mistake after hearing the manager’s news conference,” Travassos wrote. “He had every right to leave, but he chose to go out through the back door.”

Travassos said Ronaldo left the stadium in a black car rather than travelling with his team-mates on the team bus, choosing a path that appeared to lead in only one direction.

“No-one benefits from this war,” he concluded. “Finding a solution for another farewell is the minimum requirement, but even that will no longer have the dignity it should have had.”