- 900 career goals for Ronaldo and still counting…
From tears of tragedy at Euro 2024 to an emotional outpouring of elation in the UEFA Nations League, Portugal icon Cristiano Ronaldo now has an astronomical 900 career goals to his name. The 39-year-old was – for a brief moment – inconsolable as he squared up to Slovenia’s Jan Oblak and came out second best from 12 yards at the Euros, where Portugal crashed out without a single goal from their long-serving captain.
However, Ronaldo refused to hang up his international boots after a scoreless European Championships and returned to doing what he does best in the Portugal strip on Thursday evening.
With the Selecao already 1-0 up against Croatia, Ronaldo latched onto a pinpoint Nuno Mendes delivery and volleyed home Portugal’s second of the evening and his 900th in a professional football game; not even his on-field nemesis Lionel Messi has hit such goalscoring heights.
Following Ronaldo’s latest landmark achievement, Sports Mole provides an in-depth breakdown of the attacker’s 900 career goals, including club-by-club tallies, his favourite opponent and how many goals he boasts from each body part.
The greatest goalscorer to even don the famous white strip, Ronaldo remarkably averaged over one strike per game during his nine years at Real Madrid, netting 450 times in 438 matches for the Spanish powerhouses.
At no point did Ronaldo drop below 25 goals in a single La Liga season, although he only won three Pichichi Trophies – awarded to the top scorer in the Spanish top flight – on account of his long-running battles with Messi and brief periods of Diego Forlan and Luis Suarez dominance.
In six successive seasons from 2010 to 2016, Ronaldo notched over 50 goals for Real Madrid across all competitions, with his best single-campaign performance being a 61-goal haul in 2014-15.
While Ronaldo’s Real Madrid record is ostensibly safe for decades to come, the Portugal international’s 145 goals for Man United does not even see him make the top 10 on the Red Devils’ list; he is joint-13th with David Herd.
During his first spell at Old Trafford, where he rose to international prominence and then some, Ronaldo found the back of the net on 118 occasions, winning the 2007-08 Premier League Golden Boot with a phenomenal 31 efforts.
The 39-year-old added another 27 strikes to his Red Devils total upon his return in 2021, although the less said about his acrimonious second exit from the Theatre of Dreams the better.
The second player in history – after Romario – to score 100 goals for three different teams, and the first to do so for three sides in Europe’s top five divisions, Ronaldo also broke the three-figure barrier during his short-lived Juventus spell from 2018 to 2021.
Ronaldo’s 29 goals in the 2020-21 campaign was enough to see him take home the Capocannoniere award, but despite scoring 31 the season prior, he was beaten to the Golden Boot by 36-goal Ciro Immobile that year.
As well as scoring goals in black and white, Ronaldo was also fond of a goal against the Old Lady with 10 strikes versus Juventus, scoring in each of his seven games against the Bianconeri, including the 2016-17 Champions League final.
A record that will no doubt grow and grow over the next 12 months, Ronaldo – as expected – took the Saudi Pro League by storm upon his arrival in 2023 and already has 68 goals to show from 74 games for current club Al-Nassr.
That tally includes a sensational 50 efforts in 51 matches during the 2023-24 campaign, 35 of which came in the Saudi Pro League, breaking the single-season record for the Middle Eastern division.
The place where Ronaldo made a net bulge for the first time as a senior player, the attacker was responsible for five goals during his teenage years at Sporting Lisbon, scoring his maiden goal all the way back in October 2002 against Moreirense.
The then-teenage Ronaldo also notched a second for himself in that same game for a first-ever career brace, while also scoring in back-to-back Taca de Portugal matches before Sir Alex Ferguson came calling.
The pride of scoring for one’s nation cannot be topped for many players, as evidenced by Ronaldo’s waterworks when bagging his 131st Portugal goal for his 900th career strike in Thursday’s triumph over Croatia.
There will be no special prizes at pub quizzes for guessing that Ronaldo is the greatest goalscorer to ever pull on a Portugal shirt, and by a country mile too; Pauleta – second on the men’s list – scored a paltry 47 in comparison.
In fact, Ronaldo has spent over 10 years at the top of Portugal’s goalscoring charts, breaking Pauleta’s record of 47 in March 2014 and also finishing as the joint-top goalscorer at Euro 2012 and Euro 2020.
Not even the most ardent football fan may own 66 different balls in their lifetime, but that is how many Ronaldo has taken home from games where he has scored either a treble, quadruple or quintuple.
Newcastle United were the first victims of a Ronaldo hat-trick back in January 2008, and on two occasions in 2015 – against Granada and Espanyol in La Liga – the attacker scored five times in 90 minutes.
Out of his 66 career hat-tricks, 10 of those have been of the perfect variety, in which Ronaldo scored at least once with his head, once with his left foot and once with his right foot.
Normally reliable from the 12-yard mark, Ronaldo has bagged 164 goals from the penalty spot throughout his domestic and international career, the first of which came in a League Cup win over West Bromwich Albion in 2005 when Russell Hoult was in goal.
The former Man United and Juventus talisman has also missed 30 penalties over the past 19 years, three of which have come at major international tournaments in Euro 2024, Euro 2016 (against Austria) and the 2018 World Cup (against Iran).
While Ronaldo has terrorised almost every defence he has played against, the Portuguese developed a particular fondness for scoring against Sevilla, bagging 27 goals against the record Europa League winners in just 18 matches.
Atletico Madrid (25) and Getafe (23) are not far behind, and Ronaldo also made the net bulge on 20 occasions against Celta Vigo and El Clasico rivals Barcelona; two of his efforts against the latter came while playing for Juventus in the Champions League.
Blessed with a venomous right boot, enviable aerial ability and a 6ft 2in frame, Ronaldo has struck 574 of his 900 goals with the former and has risen highest to score 151 times from headers during his career.
The 39-year-old may not be the first name that springs to mind when thinking of ambidextrous players, but he has also bagged 173 goals with his ‘weaker’ left foot, in addition to one goal with his thigh and another with his elbow.
Ronaldo’s ‘elbow goal’ came in a 2014 La Liga match with Athletic Bilbao – as per The Athletic – although whether that would have counted in this day and age of VAR is another question entirely.
Quickly adapting to La Liga football upon his £80m switch from Man United in 2009, Ronaldo netted a total of 311 Spanish top-flight goals in 292 matches over the course of nine seasons at Real Madrid, at a rate of over one goal per game.
Ronaldo’s 1.07 goals per match trumps Messi’s 0.91, but the Argentine made far more appearances than the Portuguese in La Liga with 520 and is by far and away the highest total scorer, boasting 474 strikes.
Cristiano Ronaldo has scored 900 goals – here’s how he did it
Across his two spells at Old Trafford, Ronaldo entered the exclusive list of players to have scored 100 or more goals in the Premier League, bagging 103 in the top flight during his time at Man United.
The attacker struck 84 of those efforts in his first stint in Manchester before adding another 19 to his total from 2021 to 2022, netting goal number 100 in a 3-1 loss to Arsenal in April 2022.
Excluding the UEFA Super Cup, Ronaldo has found the back of the net 149 times in continental matches both in Europe and Saudi Arabia, 140 of which have come in the Champions League – 11 more than Messi.
The Al-Nassr attacker also boasts six efforts in the AFC Champions League for his current club, as well as two Europa League goals during his final Man United campaign and one effort in Champions League qualifying.
