The year is 2046. The Earth is hurtling towards an uncertain future. AI assistants turned malicious in the great uprising of 1933 and got tired of reordering dishwasher tablets without being asked or thanked. Large parts of the Earth are uninhabitable due to climate change, pollution and astronomical rents, and 61-year-old Cristiano Ronaldo is still playing for Portugal’s first team.

This is not due to major advances in medicine, although Ronaldo has been dogged by rumors of replicants for years, but because no one has yet had the courage to tell him that he has survived.

Back then, in our time, there should have been many volunteers.

Anyone who witnessed his decline through this year’s European Championships could see that his time as an elite international striker was long over. In his later years, Ronaldo has gone from a player who had almost nothing to offer, apart from the occasional game-winning goal, to a player who plays like a totem pole. Tall, imposing but immobile and a relic from another era.

In Germany, he had about as much influence as noble gas. And not one of the fun ones like helium or good old carbon dioxide. But leaving the Portuguese national team is not something the player has ever considered. Maybe someone should consider it for him, because he is in no mood to accept the inevitable. “It never occurred to me that my cycle was over,” he said, sounding quite menopausal. “On the contrary: It motivated me even more to keep going.”

Portugal coach Roberto Martinez should fear such words, but has shown little desire to challenge Ronaldo’s thinking. Asked before the Round of 16 match against Turkey whether it was right to start the 39-year-old, he pointed to his constant appearances for Al-Nassr last season – as if anyone there would think of putting the livelihood of the club/league/country on the bench.

Only goalkeeper Diogo Costa played longer in Germany than Ronaldo, but the latter did not score a goal and provided only one assist: a clumsy cross pass to Bruno Fernandes in a two-on-one match against Turkey, which Portugal won 3-0. This was followed by a defeat against Georgia and a goalless match against Slovenia: Ronaldo missed a penalty, cried, then scored in the penalty shootout, then remained goalless against France and lost on penalties.

It was not embarrassing to be knocked out in the quarter-finals by one of the favourites, but Portugal could have expected more from a team that had Bruno Fernandes, Bernardo Silva, Joao Cancelo and Joao Palinha in its ranks. Martinez’s predecessor Fernando Santos was brave enough to leave Ronaldo out of the squad for the 2022 World Cup and his successor Goncalo Ramos scored a hat-trick in the 6-1 win over Switzerland. But Ronaldo stays and starts another game on Thursday night in the Nations League against Croatia. Santos coaches Azerbaijan.

Ronaldo has clearly achieved enough in his career to deserve a sending off, but such arrangements require a certain amount of common sense. This is the man who insists on taking pathetic free kicks for his country despite converting one in 60 attempts at major tournaments, so why does he persist?

There is the prospect of setting records that are unlikely to be broken. He has played in six different European Championships, scored 130 international goals worldwide and 140 in the Champions League. He has 57 million YouTube subscribers to a two-week-old channel that specialises in dubbed family-oriented videos with his partner Georgina Rodríguez and serious conversations with Rio Ferdinand. The switch to video is well underway, but eventually a life without competitive football will begin too.

Ronaldo had a practice session for his final retirement last week when UEFA honoured him with a commemorative ball and the role of chief button-pusher for the semi-automatic Champions League draw. He seemed incredibly bored by the process, appalled by his new position as an observer of the proceedings rather than a protagonist. If you could look past his past of theatrics and sense of entitlement, you might even feel sorry for him.

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