MADRID (AP) — Cristiano Ronaldo’s sixth and likely final World Cup will be the first for the Portugal great since he left Europe to play in Saudi Arabia.
The surprise move in late 2022 shocked many in the soccer world and prompted widespread doubts about whether his form would be affected by facing lower-level competition.
But Ronaldo, who turned 41 in February, has dismissed any notion of a drop in performance going into next month’s showcase event. And, to help make his case, the goals have kept coming, both for Al Nassr and with Portugal.
Portugal coach Roberto Martínez said Ronaldo is as hungry as ever and doesn’t see any signs that the star forward has slowed down after moving to Saudi Arabia.
“He keeps performing and he keeps showing his value and he keeps showing that (he) is important for the national team,” Martínez said. “To have that hunger when you’ve won everything in the game is quite remarkable. And that’s without getting away from the fact that to be in the national team you need to be somebody that can help the team now and not with what you’ve done in the past.”
Ronaldo and his longtime rival Lionel Messi are set to reach the milestone of playing in six World Cups. Ronaldo is the all-time leader in appearances (226) and goals (143) for a men's national team. He is also the only man to have scored in five World Cups.
“Even though he’s the captain, even though probably he’s achieved what no other player in world football has achieved, which is the number of games for the national team, over 225 appearances, just with that number is a uniqueness about what he brings, but I think he has the same demands as any other player in the national team,” Martínez said.
Ronaldo made the move to Saudi Arabia in the middle of the 2022-23 season after his latest stint with Manchester United, rejecting other offers to take up a reported salary of $200 million a year and “give a different vision of this country and football.” Ronaldo said at the time his work in Europe was done and he was ready for a “new challenge.”
Criticism immediately began to pour in, with many fans and pundits not liking what appeared to be his choice of taking the big Saudi money instead of continuing his career in elite soccer. Some said he was virtually retiring from competitive soccer.
Ronaldo has constantly praised the Saudi league, though, saying it’s better than both the French and the Portuguese leagues. He said those who criticize him should go there and try to compete in temperatures of up to 40 degrees Celsius (104 F) and keep performing like he has.
“I don’t need to speak because they can say whatever they want, but the numbers don’t lie,” Ronaldo said in an interview with Piers Morgan last year. “They've never been here, they've never played here ... For me it’s (easier) to score in Spain than score in Saudi (league).”
Ronaldo’s move away from Europe did not appear to affect his performances on the international stage with Portugal. He has kept playing at a high level since then, scoring 25 goals in his last 30 games with the national team.
Ronaldo went scoreless in five European Championship games in 2024 as Portugal reached the quarterfinals. In 2025, about two and a half years after he started playing in Saudi Arabia, Ronaldo helped Portugal win the Nations League title, with one of his eight goals in the competition coming in the final against Spain.
Ronaldo has maintained a top-notch physical condition despite just having turned 41. He was hindered by a hamstring injury sustained in late February but recovered quickly. On May 7, he was scoring his 100th Saudi Pro League goal in his 105th league appearances for Al Nassr, which has a chance to win its first league title since 2019.
“All the efforts (Cristiano) makes and what he does on the pitch, which he has experienced more than all of us together, which he puts in every day and every game, is unique,” João Félix, Ronaldo’s teammate with both Al Nassr and Portugal, told the Saudi Pro League earlier this year. “And that we see him, at 40 years old, doing what he does, only gives us more motivation.”
Ronaldo scored 14 goals in 16 matches in his debut season in Saudi Arabia in 2022-23. In his first full season, he netted 35 goals in 31 games, setting a new scoring record in the league. Al Nassr won its first Arab Club Champions Cup in 2023 thanks to a pair of goals by Ronaldo in the final.
In the 2024-25 season, Ronaldo scored 25 goals in 30 matches, and so far this season he has found the net 26 times in 29 appearances. He was the league’s top scorer in both of his first two full seasons, and now is five goals shy of Al Ahli’s Ivan Toney.
Ronaldo has said this will definitely be his last attempt at winning the World Cup, but it remains unclear for how long he will continue playing.
His coach with Portugal knows better not to make any guesses.
“It’s difficult for me to say, because obviously I’ve learned very quickly not to predict the future with Cristiano, just because he’s got this elite brain about being the best that he can be today,” Martínez said. “And I’m thinking if you ask him, he’ll tell you the same. He doesn’t make plans.”
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FILE - Al Nassr's Cristiano Ronaldo celebrates after scoring at the King Saud University Stadium, in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, Jan. 19, 2023. (AP Photo/Hussein Malla, file)
FILE - Portugal's Cristiano Ronaldo celebrates after scoring during a World Cup 2026 group F qualifying soccer match between Portugal and Hungary in Lisbon, Oct. 14, 2025. (AP Photo/Armando Franca, File)
RALEIGH, N.C. (AP) — Standing behind a downtown bar, Evan Duke smiled when he thought about no longer paying federal income tax on the hundreds of dollars in tips he earns on a busy night pouring beers and mixing drinks.
But the 30-year-old said he cannot afford health insurance and worries about how higher costs for rent, food and fuel are affecting him and the patrons who slip cash into the jar at Pearl & Peril.
“It’s kind of messy right now,” Duke said.
Duke's dilemma is an economic microcosm of Donald Trump's second presidency. Although the Republican president has tried to put more money in middle-class pockets with tax cuts, the benefits are being eroded as prices keep rising, especially during the war with Iran. The latest numbers, released Tuesday, showed the rate of inflation continued to climb.
It's a financial tug-of-war shaping people’s lives as they consider the upcoming midterm elections, which will determine control of Congress during the final two years of Trump's tenure.
All of these economic issues have been center stage in the battleground state of North Carolina and its U.S. Senate race. Michael Whatley, the Republican nominee and former national party chairman, is championing Trump's tax overhaul. Roy Cooper, the Democratic candidate and a former governor, is panning Trump's management of the U.S. economy.
Duke, a registered independent, isn't sure who he'll support. Like a lot of Americans who vote with their wallets, he expects to decide based on “how things are going at the time.”
“I’ve got to do more research,” he said.
The dividing line is what Trump called “the one big beautiful bill,” his signature legislation that cuts taxes but also reduces funding for public programs like Medicaid.
When Whatley recently appeared with Vice President JD Vance in Rocky Mount, he said the midterm elections were about “protecting no tax on tips, no tax on overtime, no tax on Social Security.”
Some of the claims were an exaggeration. For example, the legislation does not entirely eliminate federal levies on overtime. But his remarks showed how much Republicans want voters to see the legislation as a “working families tax cut,” as they've taken to calling it.
“I don’t know about you, but I sure trust you to spend your money better than a federal government in D.C.,” Whatley said.
Tracy Brill, 62, a Trump supporter in the audience, said she was willing to cope with rising costs due to the war.
“The course he’s taken is spot on,” she said, adding that “I believe the other presidents didn’t do what they should have done.”
Cooper and Democrats have focused their pitch around what they call the “affordability crisis.” They emphasize health care costs and Republicans’ refusal to extend expanded subsidies for Affordable Care Act premiums. And they highlight housing and utility prices, hikes on consumer goods affected by Trump’s tariffs, and ripple effects from the president’s Iran war on everything from fuel and farmer’s fertilizer costs to groceries.
“It seems like everything that Washington is doing is driving up costs across the board,” Cooper said in Greensboro.
It's a convenient turnabout for Democrats. President Joe Biden and his party had previously faced blame for inflation, which Trump capitalized on in his comeback campaign, but now Republicans shoulder the brunt of voters' angst.
Republicans have a larger margin in the U.S. Senate than in the U.S. House, but Democrats believe economic dissatisfaction gives them a shot at full control of Congress. North Carolina is a top target along with Maine, Ohio and Alaska. There are even hopes that Iowa and Texas could be competitive, too.
Democrats have long struggled to win Senate seats in North Carolina, but they believe they have a better shot this year because Republican incumbent Thom Tillis is retiring.
Cooper also enjoys a centrist reputation and has won six statewide elections already, including two gubernatorial contests in cycles when Trump carried North Carolina. Whatley has deep ties in Republican circles as a former lobbyist and longtime party leader, but he’s not yet well known to voters.
Phyllis Aycock, a 79-year-old antiques store owner in Nash County, is leaning toward Cooper even after voting for Trump three times. She said she regrets her most recent vote for the president.
“It’s the whole trickle-down effect,” Aycock said, explaining that economic uncertainty and inflation, including premium hikes on health insurance that supplements her Medicare and cancels out Social Security cost-of-living adjustments and any tax breaks she's received during Trump’s tenure.
She said she wonders whether Trump “even thinks about the cause-and-effect of what he does or what he doesn’t do, how it directly affects us, and when I say ‘us,’ I definitely mean the middle-class, lower-class working people, the blue collar, the ones that pay the taxes.”
“It just seems like there’s no relief for us, like it’s all for the guy who has everything already,” she said.
Aycock and her son, Michael, said they’ve seen foot traffic and purchases at their store decrease, which sits a few doors down from the law office where Cooper and his father once practiced. The elder Aycock said she doesn’t know Cooper personally but has voted for him before and would consider doing so again.
As for Whatley, she’s heard only fealty to Trump. She tightened her lips, then said, “I’m worried he’s just a yes man. We’ve got enough of those.”
During Cooper's second term as governor, he convinced the Republican-run Legislature to expand Medicaid — a government insurance program for low-income or disabled adults and children in poor or working-class households — under President Barack Obama's Affordable Care Act. Cooper talks about that program alongside his criticism of Republicans' refusal to extend pandemic-era subsidies for private insurance plans.
The issue has drawn supporters like Emily Miller, a 43-year-old from Greensboro who volunteers on various voter turnout efforts that benefit Democrats.
“Medicaid and the Affordable Care Act absolutely have saved my life,” said Miller, who has physical health problems. As a Kentucky and then North Carolina resident, she leaned on the 2010 law’s benefits between her time as a public schoolteacher and her return to the workforce as an education consultant.
When she didn't have a full-time job, Miller said, she required expensive medical care, including some inpatient mental health services. She said her part-time jobs at the time would not have covered private insurance costs, much less direct market rates for her treatment.
“I’m very grateful I’ve gotten back to a place where I’ve got a career again,” Miller said, with employer-based coverage. “I’m an example of exactly what this system is supposed to do. It was a bridge. And so many people, people who are working, are struggling like that.”
Miller is also skeptical that people will benefit from Trump's legislation to cut taxes on overtime pay.
“I had an overtime-eligible job,” she said, “and I had bosses who would send us home before we got those extra hours.”
Yet for Cooper to win, he also needs to energize apathetic voters, including some Democrats.
James Outlaw, a 60-year-old in rural Bertie County, said he'll probably vote in November but doesn't see things improving regardless of the outcome.
“It won’t get no better,” he said, as he filled in his lotto numbers at a local convenience store. “Never does.”
Back behind the bar in downtown Raleigh, Duke looked forward to the coming weekend, which would bring thirstier crowds and, hopefully, more tips.
He said he appreciates getting “a few thousand dollars” from the tax breaks, and he said he’d “at least look at” Whatley, the Republican candidate. But he also thinks of the back-of-the-house workers who don't earn tips and won't benefit from it.
As for his lack of health insurance, Duke said that's not enough to guarantee his vote for Cooper, even as he remembered the Democratic nominee as “a pretty good governor.”
“I’m healthy, and I can pay rent,” he said.
That may be the outlook Republicans need as they urge voters to be patient. While speaking in Rocky Mount, Vance assured the audience that Trump wouldn’t let the economy languish.
“He constantly is pressing on the gas,” Vance said. “He wants us to do more.”
President Donald Trump speaks at an event about maternal healthcare, Monday, May 11, 2026, in the Oval Office of the White House, in Washington. (AP Photo/Jacquelyn Martin)
FILE - North Carolina Republican candidate for Senate Michael Whatley addresses a crowd, March 13, 2026, in Rocky Mount, N.C. (AP Photo/Chris Seward, File)
Democratic Senate candidate Roy Cooper speaks during a March 9, 2026, campaign stop in Greensboro, N.C. (AP Photo/Bill Barrow)
Michael Aycock, 56, left, and his mother Phyllis Aycock, 79, discuss economic conditions as they stand on the showroom floor of their antiques shop in downtown Nashville, N.C., March 11, 2026. (AP Photo/Bill Barrow)
Evan Duke, a 30-year-old bartender who lives in Raleigh, N.C., works at the Pearl & Peril, March 10, 2026, in the city's Glenwood South bar district. (AP Photo/Bill Barrow)
