Cristiano Ronaldo considers himself the best player in history. Portuguese respects those who think differently and prefers, for example, Pelé, Maradona or Lionel Messi. But your argument is that no other star is so complete.
“I do everything in football. I’m good at head, very foul, left left, I’m fast and I’m strong,” said the ace in an interview with “La Friday”, released this week, when he turns 40.
The Portuguese born on February 5, 1985 in the city of Funchal, on Madeira Island, at least is right to list its skills. Throughout his career, he has become accustomed to breaking brands, setting records and reinventing himself on the field through his talent.
Considering the criterion most widely adopted by Europeans, he is the greatest scorer in football history and is relatively close to the thousandth goal.
In Europe, it is common for press vehicles, clubs and even players themselves value only the goals scored in competition games, conventionally called “officers,” not to mention friendly. In the case of selections, the friendlies are accounted for.
Thus, Pelé is often portrayed with “only” 757 goals in his history. This data generates a lot of controversy, since in Brazil the statistics accumulated in friendly are also accounted for by clubs. In the case of the king of football, the controversy is even greater, as the European method disregards the context of the time. Many of the friendlies in which Pelé shook the net were against major teams, including European, such as Milan, Inter Milan, Real Madrid and Barcelona.
In all, the king scored 1,283 career goals, 1,091 of them for Santos. Cristiano Ronaldo has always tried to escape from this controversy, although he has already said in another opportunity that all his goals “are recorded in videos”, suggesting that the numbers of past players are not always reliable.
According to the criterion adopted by Europeans and with data from the Specialized Ogol website, the Portuguese adds to today 923 goals in 1,263 matches, 788 with the team shirts through which they played: Sporting, Manchester United, Real Madrid, Juventus and Al Nassr “He also scored 39 goals in friendly for these teams, which raises their number, in the Brazilian standard, to 962.”
With the Portuguese national team shirt, the star accumulates 135 goals, which makes him the top scorer of a national team – Argentine Lionel Messi, with 112, is the second on this list.
Adding the times when he shook the nets for a club in championship game or his national team, the Portuguese striker has a considerable 0.73 goal mark per game. Messi’s average, its main contemporary rival, is slightly higher, 0.78 goal per match, but its history has fewer goals: 856 in 1,100 games.
In considering his most recent seasons, Cristiano Ronaldo shows that he reached 40 with the goal of goal. On the 2023/24 journey, his first complete with Al Nassr shirt, where he arrived in 2022, the striker had the detachable mark of almost one goal per game: there were 50 in 51 matches.
In the current season, there are 23 goals in 25 games. Despite the slight reduction, at the current pace, he would need about 80 games to reach the thousandth before retiring.
Although he acknowledges that the day he will hang the boots are near, Cristiano Ronaldo has always done his best to extend his career. His dedication to training, his body care and record obsession is well known.
The already exceptional numbers were built with different versions of Cristiano. From his debut with Sporting’s shirt, passing through Real Madrid, to the move to the emerging Saudi Arabia football, the Portuguese has become an explosive and dribbling tip into a more central and opportunistic striker.
Commenting on the challenges of Frenchman Kylian Mbappé at Real Madrid, the Portuguese said that the 26 -year -old needs to learn precisely this function, more centralized, just as he understood.
“Mbappé doesn’t know how to play as a striker [central] Because that is not his position. If I were in Madrid, I would teach you how to play like a 9, like Cristiano, because I also had to learn, “said the Portuguese, who gives credit to Alex Ferguson, his coach at Manchester United, for the coldness he acquired.
“I arrived from Sporting and had the Portuguese mindset a little, I was bold and tried to give a lot of pedaling. My decisions on the pitch were not always the best,” he told Dazn. “Ferguson taught me how to improve.”
Ronaldo ended up consolidating himself at the left end, where he was hugely successful at Real Madrid. In the Spanish team, playing inverted (right -handed on the left) allowed him to score many goals kicking with his preferred foot, raising his number of goals. There were 450 in all for the Madrid team.
Already in the final part of his passage in Spain, the player experienced the transition to the central position. Sometimes it started on the left, but was free to float.
This perception of Cristiano Ronaldo as a 9 shirt, even with the famous 7 behind, would be more evident in Juventus. Without the explosion and the speed of when he was younger, he saw the change as a way to continue shaking the net frequently.
There were three seasons in the Italian team, with an average of 0.75 goal per game, 101 in 133 games. The average is lower than the current one and helps to understand some of the reasons why Portuguese has changed European football for Saudi Arabia, where physical requirement is usually smaller, allowing the ace to continue in search of its individual brands.
