Ronaldo walkout, Israel-Ireland tensions and Zidane breezes back as Nations League throws up drama

So much for international soccer taking a breather after the World Cup.

In fact, the recently completed window of Nations League games in Europe could hardly have been more action-packed.

Cristiano Ronaldo walked out of the Portugal squad.

Zinedine Zidane and Jürgen Klopp started their tenures in charge of France and Germany — to contrasting fortunes.

A doubleheader between Israel and Ireland played out to a backdrop of tensions.

And there were injuries. So many injuries.

All this, of course, while the many Manchester City players away on international duty digested their club being involved in one of the biggest scandals in English soccer history.

Here’s a look at a mad-cap last couple of weeks in a marathon window for Europe’s international soccer players:

After more than 23 years, 234 games and 146 goals, Ronaldo’s career with Portugal looks closer than ever to ending.

A very public power struggle with new coach Jorge Jesus has been a soap opera since the 41-year-old Ronaldo walked out on the team in a dispute over lack of playing time.

In the games Ronaldo was either an unused substitute or absent, Portugal won all three and his replacement Gonçalo Ramos — as at the 2022 World Cup when the iconic star first was dropped — scored three times.

Ronaldo ended the international break with a long post to his 679 million followers on Instagram. It detailed eight things scripted for Jesus to say at a news conference. Jesus did not say those things.

No. 6 on that list was, remarkably, for Jesus to acknowledge a mistake in asking “someone of the stature of Pelé or Maradona” to warm up on the sidelines and then not send them on the field against Norway.

Ronaldo wrote that he expects a suspension under federation rules but promised his fans “we will have one or more farewell matches.”

Two games in eight days between Ireland and Israel were as problematic as feared when UEFA made the draw in February.

Historic Irish sympathies for the Palestinian people had led the national soccer federation to ask last year for Israeli teams to be excluded from European competitions for alleged violations of UEFA statutes, then decline to host its home game in Dublin.

Two testy games were played in neutral Hungary and Serbia after politically charged pregame news conferences. First Ireland, then both teams, wore black armbands, handshakes were refused and Ireland players bowed their heads when the Israeli national anthem was played.

Now UEFA is investigating an allegation an Israel player spat at an Ireland coach near the sideline Monday.

Ireland coach Heimir Hallgrímsson said UEFA should keep the teams apart in draws for future competitions. In men’s soccer, qualifying groups are drawn Dec. 6 in Belfast for the 2028 European Championship that Ireland will co-host.

It's suddenly the age of the super-coach in international soccer, with Klopp and Zidane joining a party already attended by the likes of Carlo Ancelotti and Thomas Tuchel.

After five years away from the dugout, Zidane — his aura still intact — returned with three wins and a draw as France's replacement for Didier Deschamps. The midfield great clearly enjoyed it, too, as he marveled at the goals of Michael Olise — running down the touchline in celebration after one of them — and casually controlled the ball on the touchline, to cheers from fans, on one occasion when the ball was cleared out of play.

While Zidane has a strong platform to work from, the same cannot quite be said of Klopp. There'll be no quick fix of this long-underperforming Germany team, which won just one of its four matches and lost at home to Greece, though conclusions shouldn't be rushed.

Klopp experimented with two different squads to allow him to see more players, and he'll need time to implement his style.

It started on the very first night of matches, when Netherlands striker Brian Brobbey and Germany forward Kai Havertz both went off injured in the first half.

Then the problems just kept on coming.

France star Kylian Mbappé limped off with a hyperextended left knee and returned to Real Madrid. Alexander Isak and Cody Gakpo went back to Liverpool on the same day with injuries sustained playing for Sweden and the Netherlands, respectively. Ferran Torres left the Spain squad with ankle pain. England's new midfielder prospect, Alex Scott, was ruled out for up to two months with a thigh issue.

To top it all off, Erling Haaland hobbled out of Norway's last game, clearly fatigued. Was there an injury? Beleaguered Man City will hope not — they have enough problems.

We're about to discover how serious a lot of these injuries are.

The first extended, early-season international window worked well for stronger nations, and was appreciated by new coaches getting to know their players.

“For my timeline with the group, this first week in Spain was gold,” Scotland coach Sébastien Pocognoli said of a training camp before four games in 11 days.

England played at a consistently high level, though Tuchel preferred the old system of two-game breaks in each of September, October and November. That, Tuchel said, would “give even more players also the chance to impress in between the camps, and then come and get a nomination.”

Italy coach Roberto Mancini suggested the congested schedule was “too demanding” for players and Wales coach Craig Bellamy noted a “real stress” on his squad from a smaller nation, saying: “We know it’s a complete disadvantage for us.”

Clubs in Europe had long urged FIFA to condense national-team games into fewer blocks of games to limit disruption to their seasons and long-haul travel for players.

Coming off winning the World Cup, Spain mostly looked as good as ever by being one of two teams — Portugal was the other — to win all four matches in this window.

Nothing has really changed, with Lamine Yamal still a world-beater and Merino still a clutch super-sub. England's Barcelona-based winger Anthony Gordon said the Spanish are “built different” and their ongoing 2½-year unbeaten run reflects that.

One of Spain's historic rivals might be waking from their torpor, though. Italy, fresh off missing a third straight World Cup, won two of its four games and drew away to France as Mancini began his second spell in charge.

His first contained a European Championship title in 2021.

Could there be another Italian renaissance, so to speak? Just maybe.

See AP’s full soccer coverage here

France's Kylian Mbappe lieas on the ground after he scored and injured himself during the UEFA Nations League soccer match between Turkey and France in Izmit, Turkey, Friday, Sept. 25, 2026. (AP Photo/Khalil Hamra)

Germany's head coach Jurgen Klopp sings the national anthem before he UEFA Nations League soccer match between Greece and Germany in Thessaloniki, northern Greece, Sunday, Oct. 4, 2026. (AP Photo/Giannis Papanikos)

Irish players bow their heads during Israeli national anthem before the UEFA Nations League soccer match between the Republic of Ireland and Israel in Backa Topola, Serbia, Sunday, Oct. 4, 2026. (AP Photo/Darko Vojinovic)

France head coach Zinedine Zidane follows the game during the Nations League soccer match between France and Belgium in Saint-Denis near Paris, Monday, Oct. 5, 2026. (AP Photo/Teresa Suarez)

Portugal's Cristiano Ronaldo, wearing a wedding band, claps his hands during warmup before the Nations League soccer match between Portugal and Wales in Lisbon, Thursday, Sept. 24, 2026. (AP Photo/Armando Franca)

JERUSALEM (AP) — As Israel gears up for its first elections since Hamas' Oct. 7, 2023, attack, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his opponents are putting it at the heart of their campaigns.

Nearly every poster, stump speech or televised debate seems to reference the attack, which has scarred the country and remains fresh in the minds of voters. Three years on, the worst security failure in Israel’s history now threatens to end the career of its longest-serving prime minister.

“October 7 is kind of a framework for the entire political discussion that is going on,” said Tamar Hermann, an expert on Israeli public opinion at the Israel Democracy Institute, a Jerusalem think tank. “All of us are post-traumatic in a way.”

Netanyahu’s opponents want him to pay for the failures that led to the deadliest day in Israel’s 78-year history and plunged the country into a series of inconclusive wars. His defenders say Netanyahu was betrayed by the military establishment and that he has led Israel through a dramatic rebound from its darkest hour.

A loss in the Oct. 27 election would likely end the career of the soon-to-be 77-year-old Netanyahu. A victory would mark the greatest turnaround yet for a man who has defied naysayers for three decades.

On the morning of Oct. 7, Hamas militants fired several thousand rockets into Israel and thousands of militants attacked through holes blown in the border fence or with boats or motorized paragliders. Some 1,200 people were killed and 251 others taken hostage.

Israel responded with a military offensive that has killed over 74,000 Palestinians in the Gaza Strip, according to local health authorities, left the territory in ruins and sparked an ongoing humanitarian catastrophe. Israel later went to war against Hezbollah militants in Lebanon, seized a chunk of Syria, attacked targets in Yemen and joined the U.S. in two wars against Iran.

Hundreds of Israelis, mostly young soldiers, have died, and nearly every household has been touched by the violence. Netanyahu promised “total victory,” but Hamas, Hezbollah and Iran’s theocratic government all remain intact.

Israel’s international standing has plummeted, a number of foreign governments have accused it of genocide — a charge it vehemently rejects — and Netanyahu is now wanted by the International Criminal Court.

After a string of resignations by top security officials, Netanyahu is the only senior figure from Oct. 7 still in office, making this month’s election in many ways a referendum on his leadership.

Netanyahu and his opponents have put Oct. 7 at the forefront of their campaigns — for different reasons.

His opponents — from across the political spectrum — call his outgoing coalition “the massacre government.” Netanyahu says he has led a “war of redemption.”

His chief rival is Gadi Eisenkot, a former military chief whose son and nephew were killed in battle in Gaza. The opponents have pledged to form a government of “repair and reconstruction” — beginning with the formation of an official commission of inquiry into Oct. 7. They also have vowed to end draft exemptions for ultra-Orthodox religious men, a long-standing policy that has outraged the secular majority at a time of war, and accuse Netanyahu of threatening Israel's democratic institutions.

“The most fateful elections in the history of the State of Israel are between evasion and enlistment,” Eisenkot wrote on X. “Between taking responsibility and fleeing from responsibility.”

Netanyahu has repeatedly rejected calls for a commission of inquiry while trying to shift the blame to security officials. He recently accused the then-head of the Shin Bet security service, Ronen Bar, of withholding information ahead of the attack. Bar has vowed to file a defamation lawsuit.

Netanyahu has meanwhile denied reports in American media outlets that the United Arab Emirates and Egypt warned him ahead of Oct. 7.

He insists the country is stronger than ever.

“Our enemies expected us to collapse,” Netanyahu said in a recent address to the United Nations. “Well, we didn’t collapse. Instead, we rose and fought like lions.”

Eisenkot’s new Yashar party list includes two parents who lost children on Oct. 7. Netanyahu’s Likud party also includes two grieving parents, among them the mother of a policeman killed in battle on Oct. 7 whose remains were the last to be returned to Israel as part of a ceasefire. Another Likud candidate lost both legs while serving in Gaza.

The leader of the dovish Democrats party, Yair Golan, is a retired general who put on his uniform and rushed to the southern border to fight on Oct. 7. The centrist Together party’s list has another former general, Noam Tibon, who also battled militants as he rescued his son’s family, and the mother of a soldier killed that day.

Other parties have also added people directly impacted by the attack.

Organizers, including victims' relatives, say they are keeping politics out of a mass memorial service in Tel Aviv on Wednesday. But they have hardly concealed their anger at the country’s leadership.

“We will not let anyone evade responsibility,” Yonatan Shamriz, whose brother was taken hostage and mistakenly killed by Israeli soldiers after escaping captivity, said in a radio interview.

Largely missing from the Israeli public discourse is any discussion of the dire situation in Gaza or the fate of the Palestinians.

Israeli leaders have said little about the unprecedented death toll in Gaza, the humanitarian catastrophe and the lack of reconstruction. Instead, they have focused largely on the country’s pain over Oct. 7.

There is almost no mention of peace talks, and even Netanyahu’s challengers largely oppose the establishment of a Palestinian state alongside Israel, the international community's preferred solution for the decades-old conflict.

When a pair of Israeli filmmakers released a documentary last month about civilian deaths in Gaza, party leaders across the spectrum, including Eisenkot, accused them of treason.

Polling suggests a close race between Netanyahu and his chief rival, Eisenkot, with an uncertain outcome.

According to the Israel Democracy Institute, over 60% of Israelis say their attitudes toward Oct. 7 are a central factor in whom to vote for. That number jumps to 68% among the Jewish majority; Arab voters are most concerned with a crime wave in their communities.

But Hermann, the IDI polling expert, said this doesn’t necessarily mean bad news for Netanyahu. She says the past three years have hardened attitudes on both sides.

Just because everyone says Oct. 7 is important, she said, “doesn’t mean that they will come out with the same conclusion.”

Palestinians walk along a street surrounded by buildings destroyed in Israeli military strikes during the Israel-Hamas war in Gaza City, Tuesday, Oct. 6, 2026. (AP Photo/Jehad Alshrafi)

Jews wearing prayer shawls for the holiday of Sukkot visit the site of the Nova music festival, where hundreds of revelers were killed and abducted three years prior in the Oct. 7 Hamas attack, near Kibbutz Reim in southern Israel, Friday, Oct. 2, 2026. (AP Photo/Oded Balilty)

Israel's Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, center, lays a wreath during a state memorial ceremony in memory of those killed in the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas attack on Israel, at Mount Herzl Cemetery in Jerusalem, Monday, Oct. 5, 2026. (Debbie Hill/Pool Photo via AP) ADDITION: Adds context of memorial ceremony.

A man rides bicycle past a television channel advertisement featuring Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, right, and his main rival, opposition candidate Gadi Eisenkot, ahead of Israel's general election, in Ramat Gan, Israel, Wednesday, Sept. 23, 2026. (AP Photo/Oded Balilty)