FOOTBALL -TECH- FOUNTAIN : PRECIS

Ronaldo, within a whisker of another World Cup goal.

Lusail - QATAR :  Cristiano Ronaldo went through the motions. There he went, wheeling away in delight, his arms aloft.

Here came the signature celebration : the soaring leap from the ground, the twisting of the body, the clenching of the fists, the great roar of affirmation.

The crowd cheered. This was the moment it wanted, the perfect shot for an Instagram story.

Like a substantial amount of this World Cup, though, all was not quite as it had appeared.

Ronaldo had been indulging in an ultimately harmless - well, unless you happened to be Bruno Fernandes - and extremely convincing subterfuge. He might have fooled the crowd. He might have fooled some of his teammates.

BUT he could not hoodwink the cold, robotic eye of whatever space-race technology FIFA is employing for the noble and not all wasteful purpose of determining the rightful goal scorer at soccer matches.

Ronaldo's head had certainly been near Fernandes's cross. It had been within a whisker of it.

A kind reading might have it that perhaps he touched the ball with his aura. He may have just clipped it with his sense of self-esteem. He had not though, as the replays showed and the watchful overlord in the sky spotted, made any contact with his corporeal form. The goal belonged to Fernandes.  

That fact, quite clearly, did not fit into Ronaldo's version of reality, and if this tournament has taught us anything, it is that you can have any version of the reality you want :

If a wall that is there can also not be there, and fans can be real and also false, then why can you not score a goal with the finest of glances from your halo?

EVEN as the teams were leaving the field on Monday, Portugal's win 2-0 win over Uruguay and its place in the round of 16 secured, Ronalso was still protesting, gesturing emphatically to the part of his face - a cheekbone, perhaps, an eye socket - that he believed had grazed the ball on its way from Fernandes's foot to the Uruguay an net.

If the precise geometry of the goal mattered to Ronaldo - and we can assume, at this stage, that this stuff definitely does matter to Ronaldo - then it did not carry any larger consequence.

The World Students Society thanks Rory Smith.