Photos of Cristiano Ronaldo at 6 World Cups, from 2006 debut to 2026 finale

Portugal captain Cristiano Ronaldo made his World Cup debut in 2006 in Germany. He and Lionel Messi of Argentina are the only players to appear in six World Cups. Ronaldo's defining moments include a hat trick against Spain in 2018. He has scored at least one goal in all six World Cups in which he's appeared, something not even Messi has done.

The 41-year-old Ronaldo made his final World Cup appearance on Monday, a 1-0 loss to Spain in Arlington, Texas. He ends his career with 11 World Cup goals, which is tied for ninth. His 146 goals in 233 appearances for Portugal are both records in international soccer.

This is a photo gallery curated by AP photo editors.

Portugal's Cristiano Ronaldo (7) stands during the World Cup round of 16 soccer match between Portugal and Spain in Arlington, Texas, near Dallas, Monday, July 6, 2026. (AP Photo/Gareth Patterson)

Portugal's Cristiano Ronaldo (7) reacts during the World Cup round of 16 soccer match between Portugal and Spain in Arlington, Texas, near Dallas, Monday, July 6, 2026. (AP Photo/Julio Cortez)

Flags for Portugal and Spain are displayed as Portugal's Cristiano Ronaldo is seen on a screen ahead of the ahead the World Cup round of 16 soccer match between Portugal and Spain in Arlington, Texas, near Dallas, Monday, July 6, 2026. (AP Photo/Jessica Tobias)

FILE - Photographers capture Portugal's Cristiano Ronaldo (7) leaving the pitch after the World Cup Group K soccer match between Portugal and Uzbekistan in Houston, June 23, 2026. (AP Photo/Karen Warren, File)

Fans hold a poster showing Portugal's Cristiano Ronaldo (7) before the World Cup round of 16 soccer match between Portugal and Spain in Arlington, Texas, near Dallas, Monday, July 6, 2026. (AP Photo/Gareth Patterson)

FILE - Portugal's Cristiano Ronaldo, center, celebrates with teammates after scoring the opening goal during the World Cup Group K soccer match against Uzbekistan in Houston, June 23, 2026. (AP Photo/Karen Warren, File)

FILE - Portugal's Cristiano Ronaldo (7) waves to fans after the World Cup Group K soccer match between Portugal and Uzbekistan in Houston, June 23, 2026. (AP Photo/Eric Gay, File)

FILE - Portugal's Cristiano Ronaldo (7) leads his team's players onto the field to warm up ahead of their World Cup Group K soccer match against Colombia in Miami Gardens, Fla., June 27, 2026. (AP Photo/Rebecca Blackwell, File)

FILE - Portugal's Cristiano Ronaldo celebrates after scoring from the penalty spot his side's opening goal against Ghana during a World Cup group H soccer match in Doha, Qatar, Thursday, Nov. 24, 2022. (AP Photo/Manu Fernandez)

FILE - Portugal's Cristiano Ronaldo scores from the penalty spot during the World Cup group H soccer match against Ghana in Doha, Qatar, Nov. 24, 2022. (AP Photo/Francisco Seco, File)

FILE - Portugal's Cristiano Ronaldo kicks to score his side's equalizing goal during the group B World Cup match between against Spain in Sochi, Russia, Friday, June 15, 2018. (AP Photo/Francisco Seco, File)

FILE - Portugal's Cristiano Ronaldo celebrates scoring his team's second goal at the World Cup group B soccer match against Spain in Sochi, Russia, June 15, 2018. (AP Photo/Thanassis Stavrakis, File)

FILE - Fans watch on a giant screen as Portugal's Cristiano Ronaldo prepares to kick a penalty during the group B match between Portugal and Spain, at the FIFA Fan Fest in Moscow, Russia, June 15, 2018. (AP Photo/Felipe Dana, File)

FILE - Portugal's Cristiano Ronaldo celebrates his side's opening goal against Spain during the group B match at the World Cup in Sochi, Russia, June 15, 2018. (AP Photo/Francisco Seco, File)

FILE - Portugal's Cristiano Ronaldo scores his team's second goal against Ghana during the group G World Cup soccer match in Brasilia, Brazil, June 26, 2014. (AP Photo/Martin Mejia, File)

FILE - Ghana's Jonathan Mensah helps Portugal's Cristiano Ronaldo get up after he missed a chance to score during the group G World Cup soccer match in Brasilia, Brazil, June 26, 2014. (AP Photo/Marcio Jose Sanchez, File)

FILE - Portugal's Cristiano Ronaldo smiles during the World Cup group G soccer match against North Korea in Cape Town, South Africa, June 21, 2010. Portugal won 7-0. (AP Photo/Armando Franca, File)

FILE - Portugal's Cristiano Ronaldo celebrates Tiago's goal against North Korea during their World Cup group G soccer match in Cape Town, South Africa, June 21, 2010. (AP Photo/Kin Cheung, File)

FILE - Portugal's Cristiano Ronaldo, left, and Helder Postiga jump for the ball against England's Rio Ferdinand during a World Cup quarterfinal soccer match in Gelsenkirchen, Germany, July 1, 2006. (AP Photo/Martin Meissner, File)

FILE - Portugal's Cristiano Ronaldo scores the winning penalty kick during a shoot out against England at a quarterfinal World Cup soccer match in Gelsenkirchen, Germany, July 1, 2006. Portugal won 3-1 in a penalty kick shootout. (AP Photo/Matt Dunham, File)

FILE - Portugal's Cristiano Ronaldo celebrates with teammates after scoring the winning penalty kick in a shootout against England during the quarterfinal World Cup soccer match in Gelsenkirchen, Germany, July 1, 2006. (AP Photo/Matt Dunham, File)

LA GUAIRA, Venezuela (AP) — When the high-rise where Noel Márquez lived with his family crashed to the ground and burst into flames in Venezuela's twin earthquakes, Márquez, who happened to be at his girlfriend’s apartment, raced home and called out for his mother, grandparents and siblings. Only his 17-year-old brother, his legs pinned under columns that required heavy machinery to lift, responded.

Márquez and his father, who also survived, spoke through layers of concrete, hearing Leonel suffer, shout for help and inhale suffocating smoke as he waited for a crane to remove the columns crushing him. But it never came. After several hours, Leonel's cries gave way to silence, Márquez said.

But even that, terrible as it was, was not what disturbed him the most. The worst, Márquez said, was trying to recover his families' tangled remains with little more than his bare hands and a saw. He sliced off limbs to free the corpses of Leonel and his mother but was forced to abandon his sister, who was eight-months' pregnant, grandmother and other relatives beneath the ruins — and with their bodies, the hope that if he couldn't save them, he could at least give them proper burials.

“It’s unfair. It’s inhumane, everything that is happening,” 26-year-old Márquez said from the overflowing makeshift morgue at La Guaira port. "We couldn’t get my brother out because we didn’t get a response from the state ... and after 11 days, we are still requesting a crane.”

Márquez is one of countless Venezuelans who, after days of torment, has been left alone to search, if not for signs of life, then for loved ones’ remains — and for some semblance of closure.

International rescue teams, quietly acknowledging the possibility that no more victims would be found alive after 12 days under the rubble, are preparing to depart. Local authorities are turning their focus to finding shelter for thousands of displaced people. But the recovery of the dead has become a pressing, and horrifying, duty for Venezuelans still missing their loved ones.

“I found her hand, but her torso is crushed," said Norely Rodríguez, trying to get her 5-year-old daughter out of the ruins in the hardest-hit state of La Guaira. “I want to see if I can get her out whole."

Many say that just as they were left without government help to rescue survivors in the immediate aftermath of the quakes, so too are they now under-equipped to unearth their dead nearly two weeks later.

The more time passes, the more gruesome the recovery process becomes, said William Gomez, a firefighter in La Guaira. “It has been difficult because the bodies are already in an advanced state of decomposition, decomposed to such an extent that many times when we try to remove them, they fall apart.”

Authorities announced that the death toll rose on Monday to 3,535, with another 16,740 people injured. Beyond that is an untold toll: those whose bodies have yet to be found. There are no official statistics on how many people are buried under the rubble, but more than 30,000 reports of missing people have been sent to a website set up by the Venezuelan opposition.

Over the weekend in La Guaira, no government civil defense crews or security forces could be seen helping families dig. The vast majority of those working their way through the wreckage were civilians using their bare hands or rudimentary tools like pickaxes and shovels, occasionally accompanied by firefighters and Mexican rescuers who remain in the country.

There are 1.2 million tons of debris in the most affected parts of La Guaira, according to the United Nations Development Program.

“We are the ones helping ourselves: our family. Nobody else helps us except for a few volunteers,” said Yeikhary Urbina, who found the bodies of her mother and brother on Saturday suspended under piles of concrete, seemingly locked in an embrace.

In several WhatsApp chats on Monday, neighbors who could no longer wait for authorities to help them recover their dead discussed pooling their own money to rent a crane — for the price of $11,500, in one case.

Search teams from Italy, Argentina, Spain and other countries have already returned home. The Venezuelan government has not yet called off the search for survivors. But officials have pivoted from promoting heroic rescue stories on social media to announcing reconstruction plans under a program called Venezuela Reborn.

“Venezuela is entering a process of infrastructure recovery, of housing recovery,” acting President Delcy Rodríguez told state TV on Saturday. She has fiercely rejected widespread criticism that her government reacted too slowly to the disaster and accused media outlets of spreading misinformation.

Families with missing loved ones face fresh horrors as they scour the rubble. Some have searched for days to find corpses of loved ones so decomposed, they cannot tell them apart.

Others have dug and dug only to find nothing at all. “She kept asking, ‘Why did God play this trick on me?’" Geraldine Perdomo said of her sister, who was feverishly clawing at the ruins of her home for anything that would confirm the death of her two daughters.

And some, like Márquez, have agonized for days to extract their loved ones' bodies only to lose them again in the chaos of the impromptu morgue beneath grain silos at the La Guaira port, where a near-constant stream of bodies has been arriving since the June 24 quakes.

Márquez said that on Sunday, a week after delivering their corpses, he heard authorities had located his mother and grandfather. But Leonel, he said, "is still missing because of the negligence here.”

He and many other residents of the country’s public housing blocks — built years ago for low-income families by former socialist leader Hugo Chávez — say their complaints of negligence long predate this disaster. High-rise buildings housing hundreds of apartments pancaked in the earthquakes, reviving questions about substandard construction.

Alexander, a 42-year-old police officer who lived in one of the towers, was trembling with fury at the government on Sunday — for not addressing what he said were long-running resident concerns that his concrete housing complex was shoddily constructed, for not sending rescue teams in time to save his wife and three daughters, and now, for not delivering heavy machinery to help him recover their bodies.

"Not a single person from the government was here," he said, requesting to be identified only by his first name because, as a government employee, he feared retaliation for criticizing authorities.

After 11 days of searching, he reached the last missing member of his family — his 12-year-old daughter, her corpse decomposed but intact.

“She was waiting for me to pull her out,” he said, cradling the black plastic body bag in his arms.

DeBre reported from Buenos Aires, Argentina.

Residents and rescue workers search through the rubble of buildings damaged in the earthquakes that struck La Guaira, Venezuela, Thursday, July 2, 2026. (AP Photo/Matias Delacroix)

Relatives and friends attend the funeral Mass for Daniela Mora, her mother, Maria Cruz, and her grandmother, Judith Padron, who died when their apartment building collapsed during the earthquake in the San Bernardino neighborhood of Caracas, Venezuela, Saturday, July 4, 2026. (AP Photo/Matias Delacroix)

Forensic technician Joel Mirabal rides through the area struck by the earthquakes collecting bodies recovered from the rubble in La Guaira, Venezuela, Tuesday, June 30, 2026. (AP Photo/Matias Delacroix)

Coffins are stacked at the seaport where forensic workers sort the bodies of earthquake victims in La Guaira, Venezuela, Saturday, July 4, 2026. (AP Photo/Ariana Cubillos)

Rescue workers and forensic technician Joel Mirabal, back left, recover the body of an earthquake victim in La Guaira, Venezuela, Tuesday, June 30, 2026. (AP Photo/Matias Delacroix)