Cristiano Ronaldo stormed off the pitch before full-time when he was denied a clear stoppage-time winner in a 2-2 draw in Serbia, while Belgium were held 1-1 by the Czech Republic in World Cup qualifiers on Saturday.
Ronaldo threw off the captain’s armband and headed for the tunnel when his effort was cleared by Serbia defender Stefan Mitrovic after it had crossed the line, with Dutch referee Danny Makkelie waving play on.
With no VAR in place to review the decision, Serbia held out for a draw having fought their way back into the match from two goals down in Belgrade.
The hosts looked to be down and out after Diogo Jota scored twice in the first half for Portugal, but Aleksandar Mitrovic reduced the deficit early in the second half to become his country’s top scorer with 39 goals in 63 appearances.
Filip Kostic made it 2-2 on the hour and the game ended in chaos as Nikola Milenkovic was shown a straight red card for a violent challenge.
The Serbs and Portugal both have four points in Group A, with Luxembourg third on three points after their shock 1-0 over Ireland in Dublin.
“What happened can’t happen at this level because we switched off and let Serbia draw level 15 minutes into the second half,” said Liverpool forward Jota.
“It looked like the hard part was done after a very good first half but Serbia changed their formation at half-time, scored quickly and built on from there. We failed to kill the game off and we can’t let that happen again in the future.”
Coach Fernando Santos added: “I warned my players at half-time Serbia would make changes by switching to one up front in order to boost the midfield and I have no explanation why we let them back into the game.
“But we regained control after Serbia equalised and in the end we had a goal that didn’t count.”
Serbia coach Dragan Stojkovic praised his team for a spirited fightback.
“The word ‘surrender’ is not part of our vocabulary and the result as well as the performance shows that we are on the right track,” he said.
In Group E, Romelu Lukaku cancelled out Lukas Provod’s opener to give Belgium a 1-1 draw away to group leaders Czech Republic. Belarus beat Estonia 4-2 to move into third place behind the Belgians.
Dembele shines
In Nur-Sultan, Ousmane Dembele inspired France to a 2-0 victory over Kazakhstan on Sunday. Four days after being held 1-1 by Ukraine at the Stade de France, the world champions built their win in the first half with Sergiy Maliy’s own goal adding to Dembele’s opener before Kylian Mbappe missed a second-half penalty.
France moved top of the standings with four points, ahead of Bosnia.