Ronaldo's milestone, Ramos the hero: Portugal edge Croatia to set up an Iberian clash with Spain

Portugal came from behind to beat Croatia 2-1 and reach the Round of 16. Ivan Perišić put Croatia ahead before Cristiano Ronaldo scored his first-ever World Cup knockout goal from the spot and substitute Gonçalo Ramos headed a 94th-minute winner. A late Joško Gvardiol equaliser was ruled out by VAR. Portugal face Spain next.

It had everything: a veterans' duel, a long-awaited Ronaldo milestone, a super-sub winner and a VAR heartbreak. Portugal beat Croatia 2-1 in a gripping Round of 32 tie in Toronto, coming from behind to knock out one of the great sides of the modern era and set up an Iberian blockbuster with Spain in the last 16.

Croatia struck first. On fifty-three minutes the evergreen Ivan Perišić opened the scoring, punishing a rare Portuguese lapse to give the 2018 finalists the lead. For a while, Zlatko Dalić's old guard, marshalled by Luka Modrić one last time, looked capable of a famous win.

Then Portugal turned to their talisman. On sixty-eight minutes Cristiano Ronaldo stepped up and buried a penalty, and in doing so ticked off a box that had somehow stayed empty for two decades: at forty-one, it was his first-ever goal in a World Cup knockout match. The man simply refuses to stop rewriting his own story.

The winner, fittingly, came from the future. Roberto Martínez withdrew Ronaldo on eighty-one minutes, and his replacement Gonçalo Ramos settled it in the ninety-fourth, powering a header home from a Rafael Leão cross. Croatia thought they had responded when Joško Gvardiol poked home deep in stoppage time, but a lengthy VAR review ruled it out for a marginal offside in the buildup. Heartbreak, and the end of the road.

For Croatia, it is the closing of a golden chapter. Modrić, Perišić and a generation that reached a World Cup final and a semi-final leave the stage, likely for the last time on this biggest of nights. They were beaten by fine margins and a goalkeeper, Diogo Costa, who kept Portugal in it with a string of superb saves.

Portugal, who topped their group, now face Spain in a Round of 16 tie to savour, the Iberian neighbours meeting with a quarter-final place on the line. And the great subplot rolls on: with Lionel Messi's Argentina on the other side of the draw, Ronaldo marches deeper, the two legends still able to meet only in the final.

For Kenya, this was a feast. A Ronaldo knockout goal, a last-gasp winner and a VAR twist is everything the neutral wants, and the prospect of Spain versus Portugal has Nairobi's football lovers licking their lips. Ronaldo bado anaandika historia, na sasa tunapata Spain dhidi ya Ureno, hii ni chai ya asubuhi: Ronaldo is still writing history, and now we get Spain against Portugal, this is proper morning-tea football. As the knockouts blaze on, our Europe verdict had both these giants marked as contenders, and one of them must now fall.