The compelling thing about truly great footballers is that you can never take your eyes off them.

On Friday night Cristiano Ronaldo proved that point, toiling gallantly but fruitlessly for 80 minutes before finally intervening to almost win this two-legged tie all on his own right at the death.

With 10 minutes left to play at an anxious Estadio da Luz, Ronaldo and his Portugal team seemed bound for the return game in Stockholm on Tuesday night with the weight of the world on their shoulders, so unconvincing had their attempts to win this game been.

But then Ronaldo appeared to head the winning goal in to the corner before crashing another effort against the crossbar.

In two moments of simple authority, the Portuguese captain wrote his name across this tie and ensured that his nation can still hope of a place in the World Cup Finals in Brazil next summer.

Certainly Portugal will have to play a little better than this in the second game. Paulo Bento’s team enjoyed a great deal of possession but didn’t always look as they knew what they wanted to do with it. Sweden, on the other hand, looked dangerous on the break and will certainly be capable of turning this round at home next week.

Their own captain and talisman, the moody Zlatan Ibrahimovic, struggled to get in to the game but that will not be the case on Tuesday and that may worry a Portuguese defence that managed to concede three goals in one game to Israel during qualifying.

Nevertheless, we can wait until Tuesday for the second half of this script to be written. This, ultimately, was Ronaldo’s night and his winning goal was certainly an eye-catching affair as he dived across Martin Olsson to head the ball in to the corner past Andreas Isaksson from a Miguel Veloso cross.

Just a few minutes earlier, Ronaldo had been involved in a rather ugly clash with Isaksson and was booked after leaving his foot in on the Manchester City goalkeeper. Not long after he seemed to push his forehead in to the face of full-back Mikael Lustig. A sign of growing frustration certainly.

By the end, though, Ronaldo had come close to exacting his revenge not once but twice as another header — this time from a Hugo Almeida cross — came back off the frame of the goal. Ronaldo reacted to that disappointment by clasping his hands to his head. He, after all, knew what we all knew, namely that he had been inches away from dumping Sweden on the canvas for good.

As it is, this tie is finely balanced and perhaps it will be on Tuesday that we will see the real clash between Ronaldo and Ibrahimovic. Certainly it didn’t materialise here.

Ibrahimovic did contribute one sublime moment, selling the Portuguese defence a dummy on the edge of the penalty area in the 20th minute that gave Sebastian Larsson the chance to drive Sweden’s best chance of the game towards the corner where Rui Patricio saved.

It may sound peculiar that the PSG forward’s most memorable contribution came without him actually touching the ball but, with Sweden contained almost exclusively in their own half during the second period, it was always going to be hard for Ibrahimovic to influence the game. Anyway, that dummy alone was sumptuous enough to have hordes of young Swedish boys heading for their back yards on Friday night to try and work out how on earth he did it.

That the Swedes had no actual goals to reflect on will disappoint them. Certainly in the first half they had their moments, Johan Elmander poking a superb Lustig cross inches wide early on and Kim Kallstrom curling a good free-kick narrowly wide from 20 yards a little later on.

Had one of those efforts gone in then it would have been interesting to see what would have come of Portugal. Certainly they looked unsecure at the back — where Pepe and Bruno Alves look an unconvincing pairing — and Ibrahimovic and the rather more industrious Elmander will look to exploit that next week.

The chances are that Portugal will need to score again in Sweden to go through. Players like Raul Meireles and Joao Moutinho — both sporadically impressive on Friday — will be key to the Iberian cause but once again the Portuguese will look to one man for their real inspiration.

With Ronaldo, Portugal are a distinctly average team. Without him, they would perhaps amount to very little at all.

—Daily Mail