Cristiano Ronaldo deserves everything he gets. Titles and criticism, glory and side-eye. He’s the second-best player of his generation and would be considered the best in almost any other era. His peak at Real Madrid has been higher than Kaka’s at Milan, than Michel Platini’s at Juventus, than even his coach, Zinedine Zidane’s finest years. He’s a little bit past it these days—slower and more stationary than he was in his late twenties, existing, as poachers are wont to do, at the fringes of many matches rather than at the heart of them, but still a scorer of astounding goals and still typically decisive in big games. He had an anonymous Champions League Final, and you could see him laboring, after the contest had become academic, to find the net late and be able to claim, incorrectly, that he had helped, when the result was truly down to two gobsmacking goalkeeping mistakes and a Gareth Bale volley that mirrored Cristiano’s spectacular effort against Juventus.

Anyway, Cristiano wasn’t the story on Saturday. Which is why, after the match was over, he chose to announce that maybe he’s finished playing at Madrid. Dual English-Spanish speakers, scholars all, have been parsing the exact translation of what he said to reporters, but it was something like this: it has been very beautiful playing for Real Madrid. I’ll talk in a couple days. This statement might mean nothing, but Cristiano knows those words will rile the press. He knows it sends up klaxons within the club hierarchy. He does this nearly every summer—makes eyes at Manchester United, then stays put—but it’s usually a midsummer thing, a tactic he uses to nab himself yet another improved contract. But playing that card immediately after an important victory feels like Cristiano trying to grab Gareth Bale’s headlines.

(Bale, for his part, was more direct about the likelihood he’ll be at Madrid next season and frankly seemed downright grumpy about it: I need to be playing more. We’ll sit down with my agent in the summer.)

Sergio Ramos heard about Cristiano’s remarks and was immediately concerned. Florentino Perez brushed them off. Cristiano himself vaguely apologized for the timing of what he said, if not the content. Coverage of this will go on for at least a week or two, and if Cristiano is indeed serious about leaving, there probably won’t be any movement from United or Paris Saint-Germain or whoever wants to sign him until after the World Cup, which means that for few moments during every Portugal match, commentators speculate upon his future.

Meanwhile, Real Madrid have won three Champions Leagues in the row and four of the last five. Whatever, the game itself wasn’t an all-timer, marred as it was by Loris Karius’s blunders and Mo Salah leaving the pitch with a shoulder injury in the 31st minute. Madrid were more or less deserving winners, but this wasn’t their second-half dismantling of Juventus from last season, and the most lopsided stretch of the match in either direction was actually the first twenty minutes or so, when Liverpool’s press entirely discombobulated the Madrid midfield. None of this particularly matters. Real Madrid are about outcomes, eminence, what the record reflects. And the record reflects that this decade has belonged to them.

In this respect, Cristiano Ronaldo’s ambitions jibe with the club’s, but what occasionally puts them at odds is the matter of who gets the majority of the credit for all this. Cristiano feels tremendous ownership over this Real Madrid era, as he should, but he sometimes appears to want to be understood as the lone face of it, and soccer doesn’t really work like that. It’s too much of a team sport for one squad’s success to be defined by a single player, no matter how outstanding his performances are. When people recall these consecutive European runs decades from now, they’re going to mention Real Madrid, and they’re going to mention Ronaldo. He would like his name to come first. This is his triumph, and then it’s another storied chapter in the history of the world’s biggest club. 

In the pursuit of this, Cristiano can cut a pretty ridiculous figure. I’ve gotten the idea in recent years that, because some part of him knows he’ll never eclipse Leo Messi—not in terms of being widely beloved, not in comparison to the completeness of Messi’s genius—he has become obsessed with résumé and measurables, like he’s going to go to court some day and present to the judge that he’s won more Champions Leagues and just as many Ballons d’Or and the judge is going to hand down a legally binding order that Cristiano Ronaldo is, in fact, the superior player.

Here’s another post-match quote: the CL should be renamed to CR7 Champions League: five Champions, top scorer again, for not scoring, do you see me sad? Obviously you always want to score, but you don't so what? It doesn't matter, more Champions, more goals, top scorer again. Am I going to be sad? I can't be. 

He’s perhaps the most openly, vainly great athlete since Wilt Chamberlain, but Wilt at least usually seemed to be having a good time. He pitched his massive ego like a festival tent and threw a cookout. Cristiano’s ability, his achievements, are only for Cristiano. This is fine as far as it goes. We get to watch him play, and that’s about all that he owes us. But there are times when his small, aggrieved self-absorption can be grating. He could just be happy for Gareth Bale.

But that thing about renaming the Champions League—renaming it after his stupid moniker!—that has to be a joke, right? Cristiano letting us in, if only slightly? Whether it’s an arrogant crack or him having some fun with his persona, it scans fully as Cristiano Ronaldo. In that sense, no matter how he plays, no matter how longer he can keep doing this, he’ll always deliver.