The clip comes from Al-Nassr’s 1-1 draw at Al-Khaleej on 12 September, during a 69th-minute cooling break. Ronaldo, now dyed honey blonde and wearing Al-Nassr’s navy-and-yellow 2026/27 kit, jabs a finger at teammates, gesticulates toward the pitch, then switches his face into a flat, corporate smile. The fan-shot broadcast footage pulled in more than 9.5 million views inside a day, according to Thick Accent, and did what viral Ronaldo clips have done since the summer of 2024: sent the internet straight back to Homelander, the vainglorious antagonist of Amazon’s The Boys.

Where the meme actually started

The comparison broke into the mainstream after Portugal’s Euro 2024 Round of 16 tie with Slovenia on 1 July 2024. Ronaldo took four free kicks in that game, in the 31st, 39th, 55th and 72nd minutes, none of which troubled Jan Oblak. He then had a 105th-minute penalty saved by the Slovenia keeper and dissolved in tears before the shootout, which Portugal won 3-0.

What pushed online reaction from mockery to full meme was Ronaldo’s refusal to let anyone else near the ball at set pieces. Bruno Fernandes and Bernardo Silva were on the pitch. Ronaldo, still scoreless at the tournament, kept the duty for himself.

The underlying record makes the joke sharper. Sky Sports summarized the pattern in the aftermath of the Slovenia game: “Cristiano Ronaldo has scored from only one of his 60 attempts from free-kicks at major tournaments.” A 1.67% conversion rate over two decades is not a bad night. It is the whole résumé at that particular skill.

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Homelander, played straight

Fans read the whole sequence, the monopoly, the miss, the visible fury, as pure Homelander: the character in The Boys who casts himself as the hero, cannot tolerate anyone brighter than him in the room, and hides irritation behind a rehearsed smile. Antony Starr, who plays him, has been in on the joke from early on. He shared some of the memes on his Instagram story with the caption “Don’t really get this but I’m enjoying it,” Sportskeeda reported.

Why the visual match got worse

The reason the meme spiked again this month is largely cosmetic. Ronaldo returned to Al-Nassr’s training ground in August 2026 with a bleached, slicked-back cut, a look Yardbarker placed next to his 2000s “noodle hair” days. Combined with Al-Nassr’s navy blue and yellow, the silhouette lands close to Homelander’s own costume. One post collected by Thick Accent asked out loud: “What if the homelander comparaisons got to Ronaldo and he actually checked out The Boys, really loved and related to the character and now is fully embracing it??”

Ronaldo, 41, sits on 976 career goals and needs 24 more to reach 1,000, per Yardbarker. Al-Nassr’s next Saudi Pro League fixture is his next chance to close the gap.

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