MANCHESTER, England (AP) — Cristiano Ronaldo is on the brink of leading Portugal to another major football tournament less than a year after his international career appeared to be over.

It wasn’t clear what the future held for the five-time Champions League winner when he walked away from Manchester United last November and was then dropped by his country as it made an early exit from the World Cup in Qatar.

His move to Saudi Arabia wasn’t exactly a guarantee of success, but Ronaldo has proven he is far from done. On Friday, Portugal can secure its place at next year’s European Championship in Germany.

It will be a personal triumph for Ronaldo, who insisted his career wasn’t over after leaving European club football behind to join Al-Nassr last December.

Not only has he been the catalyst for a slew of football’s biggest names, such as Neymar and Karim Benzema, following him to the Saudi league, but he has helped Portugal to its best-ever performance in a European qualifying campaign with six wins from six matches in Group J.

A win against Slovakia on Friday will guarantee qualification and, if Ronaldo is selected, the chance for him to repeat his 2016 triumph with Portugal at the tournament.

Things have also turned around for Portugal coach Roberto Martinez, who left his post as Belgium coach at the end of his contract after failing to advance from the group stage at the World Cup. He had been criticised for failing to make the most of the country’s golden generation that included Eden Hazard, Kevin De Bruyne and Romelu Lukaku, despite leading the team to the semifinals of the 2018 World Cup and to number one in the FIFA rankings — a position it held for four years.

At the time of his appointment, one newspaper poll in Portugal claimed 75 per cent of fans who responded were against it. But Martinez is on the verge of getting another chance to deliver the major trophy he never managed to win for Belgium.