As he strides the chinchilla-fur walkways of his personal quarters, power-snacking off moon rock and filtered grasshopper tears, and breaking now and then from his daily round of 12,000 neck-crunches for a 40-minute primal scream session, there is at least some consolation for Cristiano Ronaldo.

Portugal may have been eliminated from Euro 2020, despite his own goalscoring efforts. But in better news Ronaldo is also top of “the Instagram rich list”, according to a company called HopperHQ, that issued a release on Wednesday announcing Ronaldo had been officially enthroned as the highest earning “celebrity and influencer”.

Each Ronaldo Instagram post is said to earn $1.6m, a figure that seems, in isolation, utterly insane. It is enough to elevate him above the likes of pop ace Ariana Grande and Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson (action star and now, sadly, bald fraud), who trail in behind a man whose first step into global mega-fame was coming on as substitute for Nicky Butt against Bolton.

The rules of the binary universe state that it is necessary to point out here that Lionel Messi, stuck on a laughable $1.2m per post, is at No 7. Virat Kohli is at No 19, just ahead of Rihanna, a decent showing given he plays a sport that is, we are told, unpopular with young people. David Beckham is down at No 29, still chugging along, still a thing, a master these days of the baffled-handsome-dad-tries-to-understand-algebra-assignment frown.

And yes, none of this matters in the slightest outside this inane commercial world. But it does highlight another surprising thing about these surprising Euros. There aren’t a lot of stars left.

As we edge through the quarter-finals the majority of footballers who identify as A-listers, commercial powerhouses or established club football elite have exited the tournament: Ronaldo, Gareth Bale, Paul Pogba, Kylian Mbappé, Robert Lewandowski, various Germans, and pretty much anyone who has ever been on the Ballon d’Or podium.

After the last-16 matches a running total of 29 Champions League-winning footballers had gone home. Fourteen remained, almost all non-starry defensive players. No doubt this is in part simply a function of the draw and fine-margins results. But it is also a notable departure from the usual process.

There are obvious reasons why Euro 2020 feels different, but this dialling back of the cult of personality is another strand. It is easy to forget that recent tournaments have been shadowed by a kind of star iconography, a craven celebrity worship. At the 2018 World Cup Russia’s cities were decorated with Stalinist-scale marketing murals of the idols of the age: a Ronaldo frieze, a sphinx-like Messi head, a giant crowing Neymar across the shopping centre facade.

This has been the direction of travel. Four years earlier it was noticeable that the TV production at these big summer tournaments had assumed a more lingeringly sensual tone. Even the players’ outfits had changed, tailored to a more flatteringly buffed and ripped template, mobile sporting couture. Suddenly we were confronted every few moments with cinematic close-ups, on-field events interpreted through some instant-reaction-cut to the most saleable star. A single post is worth a million dollars. Why not plaster great fat handfuls of these across the network when you get the chance?

It is easy to forget that brands and marketeers haven’t always had their fingers so deep in the mix. Social media began to assert its own violent gravitational pull at Brazil 2014, where Adidas claimed to have touched the lives of 5 billion followers (there were about 7.25 billion people on the planet). Germany’s 7-1 semi-final win in Belo Horizonte was a jumping-off point in the rise of Twitter. The fifth goal from Sami Khedira, the hotdog seller in the background of history, set a new mark for tweets per minute.

This thing, this presence, was on the pitch now, and in your lap. We have been treated ever since to in-tournament brand hijacks, meme-reaction teams, stunts, merks, corporate identities plastered across every surface of our waking lives, our dream space.

Not so much this time around. This stripped-back tournament has not been a celebrity billboard, or a constant play of brand posturing, beyond the usual scrolling ads and corporate name-checks. In a strange kind of synchronicity the action on the pitch has been characterised by collective effort, by chemistry and combinations, by teams playing at the edge of their emotions and capacities.

There has been a reaction to this. The media-machinery, the star-personality instinct, is still there. In England there have been attempts to turn Raheem Sterling into an out-and-out cover star, the visible face of progress to the quarter-finals. In practice it feels like another way of getting Sterling wrong, a footballer who doesn’t seek out that light, who is above all a team man, a hard-working ensemble player, and by that measure a fine example of the best bits of these Euros.

It is of course important to distinguish the process, the commodification of a sporting identity, from the actual human at its centre. Seeing clips of Messi at the Copa América has been like getting a holiday postcard from a fond, favourite uncle.

Ronaldo, the actual Ronaldo, is an inspiring person, and an uplifting story. Perhaps his Coke bottle moment at this tournament may even signify a shifting of power, players taking charge of the retailing of their own talent, no longer beholden to these inane connections with a brand, a drink, a hamburger. Perhaps we are simply between generations, waiting for new stars while the old ones age and die away.

Whatever the reason it has been a genuinely refreshing spectacle, a break from the constant personality fascination of club football; and also a reminder that the international game is in many ways the purest form of this bloated entertainment product, something the players do for love, for the shared experience, and out of some deeper notion of glory.