‘Nobody scored more goals than me’, says Cristiano at awards ceremony

Awarded the Platinum Quinas by the Portuguese Football Federation, Cristiano Ronaldo used his acceptance speech for the award to comment on the 1,000th goal of his career. In his speech, he stated that, even if the thousandth does not materialize, no one has scored more goals than him in football.

“If the thousand comes, great, otherwise, no one has scored more goals than me either”, said the Portuguese idol, in a statement that resonated with the comparison with Pelé, a Brazilian known as the king of football. The gap for Cristiano’s speech is due to the number of official games valid for recognizing goals.

Cristiano has, until now, scored 908 goals in 1252 official games, joining clubs and the Portuguese national team. Pelé has 1,282 goals in 1,364 matches, but the number of games includes friendlies, which were very relevant at the time he played.

Therefore, there is frequent disagreement about the validity of Pelé’s goals, which some consider to be computable, and others not. In official games, there were 767 goals from the Brazilian football icon.

With Pelé still alive, Cristiano surpassed the milestone of 767, and was recognized by himself in March 2021. Since completing his 900th goal, the Portuguese star has been following a worldwide countdown to his 1,000th.

“I’ll be honest… the culprit of this (the expectation of the thousandth goal) was me. In life, in football, on a personal level, I now approach my life by living in the moment, and I think that is the most important thing. We don’t have to think in the long term, I can’t think in the long term anymore”, he commented.

In his speech, Cristiano also commented on his dedication to the national team, which he highly values. In 216 games for Portugal, he scored 113 goals, making him the all-time top scorer among national teams. For him, defending his country is the highlight of his entire career.