CHICKENPIE.He walked off in tears. He took his time. He did not look at the scoreboard. Five World Cups, all-time record goalscorer, the only footballer on the pitch who had ever been a brand before he was a man — and on this night in Dallas, he ended it on the wrong end of an Iberian derby.
Mikel Merino came on in the 80th minute. He scored in stoppage time. That is the entire story of the game: a tall, slightly ungainly substitute midfielder running onto Ferran Torres's through-ball and rolling the ball past Diogo Costa with the kind of calm you only find in players who have done this before.
The red half of the stadium went quiet. The yellow-and-red half went ballistic. Portugal — tournament dark horses, with more World Cup pedigree than the entire rest of the bracket combined — are out in the last 16. Spain move on, and somewhere on Saturday they will meet a French side quietly assembling its own second-act story.
Merino celebrated by running around the corner flag. It echoed his father's celebration after scoring for Osasuna in Stuttgart in 1991. Some things get inherited. Some things you only get to use once. The aging king walked into the tunnel without waving. The chicken was still in the stands.
