You've seen it a thousand times before. For two decades, he's been doing this over and over again. Cristiano Ronaldo, running in behind: all the passes looking for him, finding him. That no. 7 shirt speeding away from a backline that's on its heels. Him just being a step ahead of everyone else, in mind and in body. And once through one-on-one, it's the decisiveness that has always stood out.
There's never a doubt that the shot will come. None that it will find the back of the net. Close your eyes and remember the Ronaldo you've seen. Load up that highlight reel, goal-after-goal-after-goal melding into one relentless blur of shot-taking, net-bulging action.
Remember, for instance, that one-on-one in that knockout World Cup qualifier playoff against Sweden in 2013? He's running clear, and from an alternate angle you can see Joao Moutinho has his hands up in celebration already, even with the actual taking of the shot a few seconds away. The shot, the goal... inevitable.
It's just what he does, after all. It's how he's scored 895 goals for club and country. This is Cristiano Ronaldo, a man-machine purpose-built for goalscoring and nothing else. Isn't that how he's always seen himself? The embodiment of the fictional hero who saves the world on his own. As single-minded, as selfish even, as they come.
But not on Saturday.
It's shambolic defending from a pretty poor Turkey side that sets it up. Ruben Neves plays a simple pass behind a mostly high backline (the right back, Mehmet Celik, is deeper than his teammates and plays everyone onside) and Ronaldo's on to it. Racing through, he stares Altay Bayindir in the eye, draws the keeper toward him.... and passes it five yards square to Bruno Fernandes for the empty goal tap-in. Forget stepovers and body feints, the act of the pass itself was enough deception to completely befuddle Bayindir.
It's the kind of decision making that academy coaches would have been proud of, but it's one that Ronaldo has rarely ever made on a football field. Especially not in the prime (and past-his-prime) CR7 goal-obsessed phase of it.
This is not to say that Ronaldo never passed the ball. After all, he has the record for most assists in Champions League history, and now the (joint) most in European Championship history. He's always had a keen eye for the pass, and he's always been capable of making good ones. But he's (almost) never passed it when there was a viable chance that he could have had a shot.
What makes it even more remarkable is the timing of it, in terms of where he is in his career, in terms of the conversation around him. He now plies his trade at Saudi Arabia's Al Nassr, well outside what he once called the "top level" of the game. The goals are as abundant as ever, but the opposition not of the calibre he's used to facing.
Of course, he remains wildly popular, still the most followed sportsperson in social media, headlines and cameras following him everywhere. In Saturday's game there were five pitch invaders, all of whom made a beeline for him... But there have been many questions raised about his presence in the Portugal starting XI. Valid ones, as a misfiring attack on match day 1 of this very Euros confirmed. With the competition his first major one after Portugal's (and his) debacle at the World Cup in Qatar, those questions would have been prickling him.
He's usually answered his critics by burying them under the sheer volume of his goals, by ramping up the frequency of his already high-frequency shot-taking. It's worked most times, it's not on more recent occasions, but the tactic has never changed. So, to opt not shoot here speaks volumes to the confidence he is playing with right now. 'Don't worry,' he seems to be saying. 'I've still got it'.
More questions will remain, especially on just how much better he makes Portugal against teams that will undoubtedly be tougher than the lacklustre Turkey they swatted aside (3-0) on Saturday. Much more serious questions will remain, of course, about his off-field controversies.
For now, though, he's answered one small on-field-based doubt. Can Ronaldo, the footballer, really surprise us anymore? Well... Yes, he can.
And for that, and for doing something he (almost) never does, Cristiano Ronaldo takes our Moment of the Day of day 9 of Euro 2024.