A moment in the back corridors of the stadium told the story of Cristiano Ronaldo's last stand. He walked through it, his faced streaked with tears, amid a cluster of Portuguese players for whom the obvious gesture would have been to console and support. None did. Ruben Dias, the closest to him, stared implacably ahead. Ronaldo took that final walk alone.

Those players knew and all of Portugal knew. That the national team's slavish devotion to perhaps their greatest footballer had come at a price. Puncturing Spain required genius in the precious few moments of opportunity which would present themselves.

The kind of genius Ronaldo displayed in Sochi in Portugal's opening game of the 2018 World Cup, when he scored a hat-trick and carried a side who were Spain's inferiors. Eight years on, Portugal carried him.

There were glimpses of a fading glory. The shimmy and shot to draw a save from Unai Simon and the ball he somehow wrapped a left foot around after Pedro Neto's cross had been headed into his ambit.

But for all of us who have had the privilege of watching this force of nature in his pomp – soaring to power in a header in Manchester United's Champions League quarter final in AS Roma's Stadio Olimpico in 2008; the bicycle kick goal for Real Madrid at Juventus at the tournament's same stage a decade later – there was an inestimable sadness about the way it ended.

The numbers told part of the story. Ronaldo touched the ball 19 times in total and a mere seven times in the second half. But the look on his team-mates' faces revealed more. Neto's expression, for example, after he had driven forward in the second half, looking to create the decisive chance. Ronaldo had peeled away to the far post, but when the ball came in, the old jet propulsion he'd once possessed, to drive into the six-yard box and meet it, had gone. The chance slipped away.

Spain knew this, too, and delighted in it. When Brazil played Norway in New Jersey three days ago, Erling Haaland's attacking threat so terrified them that they dared not contemplate all pushing up and risk allowing the striker a one-on-one. They ended up camped in their own half. Spain played high and free, in the knowledge that the 41-year-old striker Portugal had left up posed them no jeopardy. They would always reel him in.

The game was screaming out for the introduction of Gonçalo Ramos, whose arrival in Ronaldo's place had proved decisive in the round of 32 game against Croatia. He didn't materialise and by the end, Portugal were playing around Ronaldo.

When a cross was sent in during their desperate last minutes, it was the 5ft 8in Bernardo Silva who leapt for it. Another cross came. Joao Neves, who stands 5ft 9in, took the leap.

The circus which had surrounded Ronaldo's last dance did not dignify a player of such unalloyed brilliance and extraordinary work ethic. His sister Katia Aveiro's unhelpful Instagram choreography lit fires that cannot have helped the morale of a nation who never gelled. One of her early interventions, implying criticism of Bruno Fernandes, went around the world in minutes.

Fernandes was the de facto captain, assuming leadership duties in the pre-match press conferences where he patiently and respectfully talked up the significance of Ronaldo, the nominal captain. The man himself walked in for a surreal valedictory appearance on Sunday, complaining that one journalist didn't seem to like him. 'The hardest thing at 41 is talking to certain journalists, especially those who don't like me,' he said, offering a glimpse into that complicated mind. When he confirmed that this tournament would be his last for Portugal, whatever happened, it seemed like farewell before the last 16 game had even kicked off.

In the Dallas Stadium mixed zone, where several hundreds of journalists had gathered in the hope he would speak last night, Ronaldo reaffirmed that he left with a clear conscience, having won three titles with Portugal. 'Before Cristiano, they hadn't won any. I'm happy,' he said, that discussion of himself in the third person proving as troubling as it always does in sport.

In Portugal, the tone was respectful and appreciative of Ronaldo, who remains a national idol, though former national team manager António Oliveira spoke for many when, in an opinion piece headlined Acima de todos, Portugal ('Above all, Portugal) he observed that Ronaldo should have been substituted by Roberto Martinez against Spain.

'For his talent, discipline, ambition, longevity, and everything he gave to Portuguese football, he deserves respect, admiration, and gratitude. His legacy is eternal,' wrote Oliviera, who managed the squad from 1994 to 1996 and 2000 to 2002. 'But in a World Cup, the collective must always come before any individual. When the game demands a different physical or competitive response, it is up to the coach to decide with courage and clarity what best serves the team.

'A different decision could have been made - one capable of protecting Portugal and Cristiano Ronaldo himself. We will never know if the result would have been different. But I know that football thrives on the right decisions at the right time. Because, in the national team, there is only one jersey above all others: that of Portugal.'

Ronaldo fought to the very end to discover and match the joys that Lionel Messi had found in the jersey of his nation, though he never quite did. 'It would be top,' he said of the prospect of a quarter final meeting with the Argentinian, after scoring twice in the 5-0 smashing of Uzbekistan in the group stage.

But it turned out to be far easier facing the Uzbeks than the Spaniards at the age of 41, as the 39-year-old Messi may find out soon enough. Ronaldo is not only the senior of the two but the one whose diminishing powers were more exposed as a forward.

'That's the life of a footballer; sometimes you win, sometimes you lose. You have to keep going. Tomorrow is another day,' he said before boarding a bus and heading out of this tournament. There was such an aching melancholy about that. It was no way for one of the greats to step down from football's grandest stage.