Portugal has been in crisis for a long time and is playing badly.
In the qualifiers for the World Cup, they lost at home to Serbia and took only second place in their group, so they had to play additional qualifiers.
Ronaldo also played in all those matches for Portugal, but he did not really help the Portuguese team.
I do not agree that Portugal has been in crisis; no not at all. Yes they struggled during the qualifying stages for the worldcup but you cannot compare that form to now. Why? Now Portugal is going to the worldcup with a complete 11 in view (compared to qualifiers where they chop and change tactics and players as related to available players due to either fatigue form or injuries).
In my opinion, portugal have a very solid defense; if they can take their chances, they will have a good run in the worldcup. Same with Argentina, france and the Netherlands
Portugal has enough qualified player resources, they have almost complete depth of players on all fronts. it's just that, their problems are on the front lines. yes this is just my opinion, does not determine the real truth. So far, we have only talked based on existing statistics and data. if we observe, Fernando Santos tends to use a 4-2-3-1 or 4-3-3 formation.
only in the trial match against Nigeria, Portugal used a different formation with a 4-3-1-2 pattern. the results are quite effective, despite the fact that Nigeria is not as resilient as it used to be.
as @Daniel91 said, Ronaldo didn't contribute too much throughout Portugal's matches in the Nations League or Qualification in the World Cup. throughout our assessment, Ronaldo's performance has really dropped dramatically. not infrequently he always has difficulty performing at his best, we can refer to the statistics when Ronaldo played with his club. this shows that his sharpness has decreased dramatically, plus as he is not young anymore.
I hope he can show his prowess again in this world cup event. So, let's see what he can do with his national team.