WHEN England’s players look back in years to come on the night they performed like the Lions of Lisbon, they will forget the bad. David Beckham, a peripheral figure throughout, will recall an evening on which he performed as a true captain, providing leadership and quality when it mattered. Darius Vassell will remember the night he was called from the chorus line to step into the shoes of the 18-year-old star turn. And Ashley Cole will look back fondly on how he remained true to his word and nullified Cristiano Ronaldo.

The real version is slightly different. As heroically as he and others battled last night in the Stadium of Light, Cole should not kid himself into believing that he fulfilled his pre-match promise to quell the threat of Ronaldo. In the build-up, he had recalled how, when playing for Arsenal against Manchester United at Old Trafford last season, he “gave him a hard tackle and he was gone”, when he should have paid more heed to his experience in the first quarter of the same match, when the Portuguese teenager repeatedly embarrassed him.

On this occasion, the battle was somewhat less clear-cut, but to hand the individual honours to Cole would be to overlook the Arsenal full back being close to breaking point for much of the game. Had he been booked for one of two wild and desperate challenges on the 19-year-old, the experience would have been even more testing. He deserves great credit for sticking to his task so doggedly, but, even when Portugal were trailing 1-0, it was Ronaldo who, after Wayne Rooney’ s early departure, was not only the youngest player on the pitch but also the most dangerous.

Ronaldo is perhaps the one Portugal player to have enhanced his reputation over the course of the finals, for which, it seemed as little as two months ago, that he might play no part. When a minor injury prompted him to sit out training the day before a friendly match against Sweden on April 28, Luiz Felipe Scolari, the coach, said that he had “a lot of doubts” about the youngster. “I want players who are as keen to play for their country as their club,” Scolari said. “If you can play with a knock for your club, you can do it for your country.”

The perception was a lazy one and wholly misplaced. As a Brazilian, one who led his country to victory in the last World Cup, Scolari should not have been such a loyal devotee to the English school of thought that distrusts those with flair. What impresses Sir Alex Ferguson most about Ronaldo is not the repertoire of tricks with which he bamboozles opposition defenders but that, no matter how fierce the provocation or how heavy the tackles — away matches a gainst Charlton Athletic and Leeds United last autumn spring to mind — he keeps coming back for more.

It is an attitude that, over the course of the tournament, he has impressed on a Portuguese public that previously knew him as the skinny boy who played for Sporting Lisbon before his transfer to United last August. In the opening game of the finals, when Portugal suffered what seemed a disastrous 2-1 defeat by Greece, Ronaldo offered a silver lining. Desperate to impress after his arrival as a half-time substitute, he had conceded the decisive penalty, but he was forgiven, not because of his stoppage-time goal but because he performed so much more courageously than his more experienced team-mates.

He started the tournament on the bench but, along with Deco, has ended it as the new icon of Portuguese football. Luis Figo is revered, the more so after he rolled back the years in the 1-0 victory over Spain last Sunday, but the weary sighs after he wasted a promising free kick for the second time in first-half stoppage time last night told you that his decline is no longer simply the worst-kept secret in European football.

While he is not too old to play in the next World Cup finals in Germany, when he will be 33, it is clear that his is a talent on the wane.

Unlike Ronaldo. It seemed to be at his whim, rather than his captain’s, that he and Figo changed wings in order to ensure that England’s defence could not settle. It was he whose trickery and direct running prompted Neville and Cole into desperate challenges on the edge of the penalty area in the first half, leading to the free kicks that Figo wasted. It was he, rather than Nuno Gomes, who was following up whenever the ball ran loose in the box. It was he who was paid the ultimate compliment when Sven-Göran Eriksson reshuffled his midfield, pushing Steven Gerrard to the left-hand side to protect Cole.

A greater compliment, though, was to follow. When Scolari made his final substitution, with 15 minutes remaining, Ronaldo instinctively looked to the bench. It was Figo, though, whose number was up. This may have been his last appearance in the No 7 shirt and Ronaldo, having replaced Beckham in the Old Trafford version, will not be daunted by the prospect of following suit with Portugal.

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