India, July 7 -- Yesterday, Neymar left crying. Today, Cristiano Ronaldo followed him into the same darkness.

Two nights, two icons, two exits that felt bigger than the scoreboard. One was the fallen prince of Brazil, the boy once asked to carry the soul of a football nation and return it to the throne. The other was the uncrowned World Cup king, the conqueror of clubs, records and generations, but not of the one tournament he wanted more than anything else. In the space of barely 24 hours, the World Cup did not just eliminate Brazil and Portugal. It seemed to close the emotional book on two of football's most complicated modern legacies.

Neymar's goodbye was the more final of the two. His tears after Brazil's defeat to Norway were not ...