You’ve heard the story a thousand times. A nation blessed with once-in-a-generation talent assembles a squad that looks devastating on paper. The tournament arrives. The results fall flat. And the crowd, hungry for blood, points one finger at the man standing on the touchline.
Roberto Martinez just resigned as Portugal’s manager. Before that, he presided over Belgium’s golden generation. Two golden generations. Two crashes. The internet has already convicted him: golden generation killer.
But here’s what nobody wants to say out loud: the golden generation didn’t need killing. It was already dead. It died the moment eleven superstars walked onto the pitch expecting eleven different games to be played around them.
Let’s talk about Belgium first. Martinez took them to a World Cup semifinal. That’s not failure — that’s the ceiling. At the semifinal stage, the remaining four teams are so closely matched that the result comes down to variables no coach controls: a bounce, a call, a moment of madness. Getting Belgium to the final four wasn’t underachievement. It was the maximum extraction of a squad that was never as harmonious as it was talented.
Then came Portugal. And this is where the story gets uncomfortable.
People say Martinez couldn’t handle Cristiano Ronaldo. True. But who can? The Ronaldo question isn’t a coaching problem — it’s a political crisis disguised as a football decision. Even Carlo Ancelotti, one of the greatest managers alive, got knocked out at the same stage. The crow laughing at the pig’s blackness doesn’t change the fact that they’re both covered in mud.
But Ronaldo is actually the least of Portugal’s problems. He’s already accepted his role — no longer demanding the ball, just occupying space up front, trying to finish moves others create. The real dysfunction runs deeper.
Take Bruno Fernandes. At Manchester United, he is the absolute center of gravity. Every attack flows through him. Pass him the ball or he will berate you for ninety minutes, from the pitch to the dressing room and back to the pitch again. That’s his ecosystem. That’s how he functions.
Now drop him into the Portuguese national team. Suddenly he’s not the sun anymore. He has to share orbit with Vitinha and João Neves, who have their own ideas about how the ball should move. On the right, Bernardo Silva and Pedro Neto want their touches. Up front, there’s that one guy who needs no introduction. Bruno Fernandes doesn’t have a Portugal problem. He has a problem with not being the universe’s center — and no coach can fix that with a tactics board.
Look at Vitinha and João Neves. At PSG, they orchestrate with devastating wingers stretching the pitch on both sides. Portugal doesn’t have those wingers. Rafael Leão is a bench weapon, not a starter. Neto isn’t a pure speed merchant. The system that makes them brilliant at club level simply doesn’t exist internationally.
Martinez tried everything. Against DR Congo, he attempted possession football — it looked fragile. Against Uzbekistan, he switched to counter-attacking — it showed promise. Against Colombia, that same approach looked toothless. There was no coherent identity, just a collection of brilliant individuals searching for inspiration in real time.
And yet, somehow, this chaotic mess still nearly beat Spain. It took a stoppage-time winner to put them away. Because when you gather enough world-class players in one shirt, the sheer weight of talent keeps the corpse moving. A hundred-legged insect, dead but still crawling.
The uncomfortable truth is this: modern superstar culture has made national team management nearly impossible. Players spend ten months a year as the protagonist of their club’s story. Then they’re asked, for six weeks every two years, to become supporting cast members in someone else’s narrative. The psychological whiplash is enormous. And the coach — any coach — is expected to resolve it in a handful of training sessions.
Martinez will get another job. Small-squad, Latin-style tacticians remain in demand across European football. But the next man who sits in the Portugal hot seat will face the same impossible equation: eleven stars who’ve never learned to be teammates, a fanbase expecting glory, and a media ready to crucify him for problems that existed before he arrived and will persist long after he leaves.
The golden generation isn’t killed by coaches. It’s killed by its own reflection — eleven superstars staring into the mirror, each one waiting for the other ten to get out of the way.
FAQ
Q: Isn't it the coach's job to manage egos and get the best out of star players?
A: Yes — within reason. But modern superstars spend 10 months a year as the protagonist of their club system. Asking a coach to rewire that psychology in a few training sessions before a tournament is like asking a therapist to fix a marriage in one weekend. The time and authority simply don't exist.
Q: What does this mean for the next Portugal manager?
A: Nothing changes. The structural problem — players who can't subordinate their club roles — persists regardless of who sits in the chair. Unless a future coach is given real authority to bench stars (which federations rarely allow), the next man will be the next scapegoat.
Q: So you're saying golden generations are doomed by definition?
A: Not always — Spain 2008-2012 worked because the core played together at Barcelona and had a shared tactical language. But when you assemble stars from six different club systems with six different ideas of how football should be played, cohesion becomes a fantasy. Talent without shared identity is just expensive chaos.