Roberto Martinez: On Portugal's three pillars of World Cup prep and managing Cristiano Ronaldo

ATLANTA — On the surface, Portugal’s two-match swing through North America is a pair of friendlies: a scoreless draw with Mexico at altitude in Mexico City and Tuesday’s meeting with the United States inside the domed Mercedes-Benz Stadium. Beneath the surface, it is the penultimate dress rehearsal for a 2026 World Cup that manager Roberto Martinez believes will be “very unique, very different” from any tournament in history.

Martinez calls the anomalies “red flags”—the sprawling geography, the climate swings, the indoor venues, the traffic, the time-zone hops, the 50-day separation from family. He discovered them last summer while scouting the FIFA Club World Cup in Miami and resolved that the only antidote was immersion. Hence this March camp: one match on a temporary grass pitch under a closed roof, another after a cross-border flight, a night-before training session, and the inevitable logistical snags that will confront the Seleção next June.

The itinerary is deliberate. Portugal will not play at altitude in 2026, but the Mexico City exercise replicated the travel fatigue. Houston’s NRG Stadium—site of their first two group games—will be indoors; Tuesday’s indoor friendly offers a preview. After the final whistle, the squad will scatter for a seven-day decompression period Martinez mandates to counter “the mental fatigue you accumulate” at the end of a European season. Reassembly in Portugal will follow, then a stateside base camp an hour north of Miami, daily shuttles to Houston for matches one and two, and a quick return to South Florida, mimicking the Qatar 2022 model of a single, familiar hotel bed.

“Winning a World Cup is managing the player who is away from a newborn for 50 days,” Martinez said. “That’s where the work is.”

On the field, the manager’s framework rests on three non-negotiables: clarity, no “I” in team, and constant improvement. Clarity means every player understands his on- and off-pitch brief daily. The second pillar fuses individual motivation—“the why that is valuable to each person,” Martinez explains—to collective ambition. The third demands daily micro-gains, a trait embodied, in his view, by Cristiano Ronaldo.

Ronaldo, recovering from a minor hamstring injury sustained at Al-Nassr, skipped both friendlies but remains, according to Martinez, “not at risk” for the World Cup. The 39-year-old’s longevity, the coach argues, springs from an obsession with marginal advantages—nutrition, sleep, tactical nuance—and an insatiable appetite that “you cannot measure.” Martinez, who traveled to meet 32 players after taking the job in 2023, calls the striker “easy to coach” because he drags standards upward and polices the environment.

That environment will revolve around a forward pairing of Ronaldo and Gonçalo Ramos, with a third striker of “a different profile” still to be identified. Behind them, Bruno Fernandes, Vitinha and João Neves form a midfield that dominated Ligue 1 and Champions League nights for PSG and Manchester United. Full-back depth is enviable—Nuno Mendes, João Cancelo, Diogo Dalot—while central defence is the lone question mark after Rúben Dias and Bernardo Silva were left out of this window for load management.

Selection, Martinez insists, is not about the 26 best footballers but the 26 best teammates. “If you pick the star who can only accept five minutes, it’s very difficult to have a committed player,” he said. Egos are welcome; bad attitudes are not. The coach’s litmus test is simple: high energy plus high attitude equals a plane ticket. Anything else is a “bomb” to be defused.

Tuesday’s opponent, the U.S., offers a final Concacaf look before the summer. For Martinez, it is another chance to stress-test the red-flag protocol, refine the pillars, and ensure that when the World Cup kicks off, Portugal’s only surprises will be for the opposition.