Portugal beat Denmark 4-2 in Copenhagen on October 1 without Cristiano Ronaldo. Their social media accounts have been bleeding followers ever since.

The Portuguese Football Federation’s official channels have lost more than two million followers in total since Ronaldo walked out of the training camp, the Spanish outlet AS reported this week. Instagram has taken by far the heaviest hit.

The federation’s main Instagram account dropped from roughly 24.9 million followers on the day of the walkout to 23.8 million by the following evening, a loss of over one million inside 24 hours. It has kept falling since, with the Instagram account now sitting around 23.4 million, a drop of more than 1.5 million from the pre-walkout base.

The scale of the unfollow wave looks less like a bad news cycle and more like a sustained global protest from fans of the 41-year-old forward.

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The row with Jorge Jesus

Ronaldo had been an unused substitute in Portugal’s 2-1 UEFA Nations League win over Norway in Oslo on September 27. Three days later, hours after head coach Jorge Jesus held a press conference in Copenhagen in which he insisted no player would decide his team selection, the forward left camp.

In a statement posted to Instagram and reported by Sky Sports, Ronaldo wrote:

“Following the national team manager’s press conference, and after a conversation with the President of the Portuguese Football Federation, I decided to leave the national team’s training camp.”

He said he would eventually reveal “the truth about the reasons behind my departure.”

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Jesus had already drawn the line in public.

“I’m the coach and I told the player that he wasn’t going to play. It won’t be Cristiano, or any other player, who changes my ideas as a coach. Never,” the coach said.

Ronaldo’s 679 million followers

The scale of the backlash reflects a reach few athletes on the planet can match. Ronaldo is the most-followed person on Instagram with roughly 679 million followers, a number many times larger than the entire fan base of the national team he just walked out on.

Portugal, meanwhile, kept winning. João Cancelo, Gonçalo Ramos, Vitinha and João Félix scored in the 4-2 win in Copenhagen. The result extended their perfect record in the Nations League group stage.

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Ronaldo flew first to Madrid and then on to Riyadh, where he returned to training with Al-Nassr on October 5. He has three goals and one assist in six Saudi Pro League appearances this season.

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