{"id":1069707,"date":"2026-07-05T09:32:33","date_gmt":"2026-07-05T09:32:33","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/1069707\/"},"modified":"2026-07-05T09:32:33","modified_gmt":"2026-07-05T09:32:33","slug":"cristiano-ronaldos-last-dance-spain-goalkeeper-unai-simon-not-convinced-that-portuguese-goat-is-done-with-world-cups-despite-being-past-his-peak","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/1069707\/","title":{"rendered":"Cristiano Ronaldo\u2019s \u2018last dance\u2019? Spain goalkeeper Unai Simon not convinced that Portuguese GOAT is done with World Cups despite being past his \u2018peak\u2019"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Ahead of the knockout tie, Simon assessed the challenge of facing Ronaldo, pointing to the striker&#8217;s remarkable efficiency inside the penalty area despite his advancing years.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;The Cristiano we have at the World Cup is not the same as six or seven years ago, when he was at his peak,&#8221; Simon said, as quoted by <a href=\"https:\/\/www.ojogo.pt\/internacional\/artigo\/nao-acho-que-seja-a-ultima-danca-de-cristiano-ronaldo\/18102672\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\" data-affiliate-type=\"NONE\">O Jogo<\/a>. &#8220;But we have to try to keep him as far away from the area as possible. In the Nations League final, he had a ball inside the area and scored. He has that goal-scoring ability that we would all like to have on our team.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;What Cristiano has is that, in the box, he turns himself around to finish, look for through passes, create space&#8230; He has great experience and teammates he&#8217;s played with for a long time and understands everything perfectly. If he gets into the box, he&#8217;s decisive. He reads these situations very well and we have to be prepared for everything.&#8221;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Ahead of the knockout tie, Simon assessed the challenge of facing Ronaldo, pointing to the striker&#8217;s remarkable efficiency&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":1069708,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[5312],"tags":[160732,2000,299,3046,70313,104,293319,1514],"class_list":["post-1069707","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-spain","tag-c-ronaldo","tag-eu","tag-europe","tag-portugal","tag-portugal-vs-spain","tag-spain","tag-u-simon","tag-world-cup"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/116866681828824266","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1069707","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1069707"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1069707\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1069708"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1069707"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1069707"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1069707"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}