Ronaldo retires from international football

Cris­tiano Ronal­do an­nounced on Thurs­day he won’t play for Por­tu­gal any­more, end­ing a ca­reer that spanned six World Cups and in­clud­ed a Eu­ro­pean ti­tle and the men’s all-time in­ter­na­tion­al scor­ing record.

The an­nounce­ment marked the end of a laud­ed ca­reer that be­gan more than two decades ago be­fore Eu­ro 2004 and fin­ished with him walk­ing out on the na­tion­al team af­ter falling out with coach Jorge Je­sus.

“To the Por­tuguese peo­ple, the day has come for me to hand back the No. 7 shirt of our na­tion­al team,” the 41-year-old Ronal­do said in a long video mes­sage on so­cial me­dia. “I nev­er felt it be­longed to me alone but for 23 years I had the priv­i­lege and the re­spon­si­bil­i­ty of wear­ing it, de­fend­ing it and car­ry­ing it with me in­to sta­di­ums all around the world.