377. The End

Cristiano Ronaldo's World Cup campaign has ended in Dallas, Texas. Portugal was eliminated. Ronaldo is forty-one years old. The question, which is being asked with some urgency by people who follow football, is how the sport will continue once the Messi and Ronaldo era is fully over.

This is a reasonable question. For approximately the past twenty years, the sport of association football has functioned as though it were organized around two specific people. These two people, Lionel Messi and Cristiano Ronaldo, have between them won thirteen Ballon d'Or awards, a prize given annually to the best footballer in the world. They have held the prize between them, with occasional interruptions, since 2008. Other players have existed during this period. Many of them have been excellent. They have scored important goals and won club championships and done all the things that players do. They have not been one of these two people. This is the era.

The era is ending. Messi is thirty-eight years old. Ronaldo is forty-one. Both men are still playing, which is remarkable, but the window is closing in the way that windows close on forty-one-year-old professional athletes who have spent their careers at the highest level of physical competition. The window does not care about their careers. The window is closing.

Football analysts have noted that the sport will need a new organizing principle. Several candidates have been identified. Lamine Yamal is nineteen years old and already one of the best players in the world. He is Spanish. Football will likely find another person, or possibly two people, around whom to organize the next twenty years. This has happened before in sports. The previous era also ended. People also asked how the sport would continue. The sport continued.

Dallas had a role in the conclusion of the Ronaldo era. Dallas did not apply for this role. Dallas is a city in Texas. It hosts events. This was one of them. Ronaldo flew home. The stadium is preparing for its next match. Dallas continues.