Cristiano Ronaldo. It’s a name that has conquered the hearts of billions of football fans across the world. The Portuguese sensation was one-half of probably the greatest rivalries the game of football has ever seen. Going toe-to-toe with the impressive Lionel Messi, Ronaldo raised his game to a level that only a select few footballers have reached. The 38 -year-old has also demonstrated peak physical fitness throughout his career, showing how far a human can excel at a particular craft if he aims to chase perfection.
So, it is not surprising to see that Ronaldo has several records to his name, a few he has broken, a few he has created, some which might be broken, and some which are as close to invincible as a record can get.
For a player of Ronaldo’s calibre, breaking or making new records is not difficult. And today, we rank five of the best records that Cristiano Ronaldo has to his name.
Most goals in a single UEFA campaign
Cristiano Ronaldo has been one of the best players ever to kick a ball. However, he always went one notch up in the UEFA Champions League, a tournament where he was a menace to the opposition. Ronaldo was a serial winner, which was nowhere more evident in the continental tournament.
And in the 2013-14 season, the Portuguese would show the world’s most ruthless side when he scored 17 goals helping Real Madrid win their 10th Champions League and they are first since the 2001-02 season. Ronaldo started the Champions League brilliantly, scoring a hattrick against Galatasaray. He then added two consecutive braces in the next two matches against Copenhagen and Juventus. Finally, he ended the group stages with nine goals to his name.
His scoring exploits continued in the round of 16 as he scored four goals across two games against Schalke 04. He would score only one goal in the quarter-finals before adding another brace against defending champions Bayern Munich. His 17th goal came in the final against Atletico Madrid.
Also read: Marcus Rashford’s 10 unknown facts
First player to win five UEFA Champions League titles
As mentioned above, Cristiano Ronaldo has been brilliant in the Champions League. And in 2017-18, he became the first player to win the Champions League five times. Ronaldo won his first title with Manchester United, while the rest came during his time at Real Madrid. During this time, he scored a whopping 68 goals.
Ronaldo scored eight goals for Manchester United in the 2007-08 season, where he also scored 31 goals in the Premier League, a record at that time for a 38-game season.
For his next triumph, he scored 17 goals, which is still the record for the most goals by a player in a single Champions League campaign. In the 2015-16 season, he almost came close to matching the record, scoring 16 goals to win Real Madrid their 11th Champions League title.
However, he was not done, as he added 27 goals in the next two seasons to help Real Madrid become the first club to win three consecutive Champions League titles.
Best goals-to-game ratio in La Liga
Cristiano Ronaldo spent nine fruitful years at Real Madrid in La Liga. During his time, he helped Los Blancos win 15 trophies and helped the club climb its way back to the pinnacle of world football. And during this time, he also scored a truckload of goals.
And what was more impressive was the rate at which he scored these goals. Ronaldo played 292 games in La Liga and scored 311 goals helping Real Madrid to two league titles. This gives him a unique 1.065 goals per game, a record that even Lionel Messi could not match, and it will be highly unlikely that the record will ever be broken.
🇵🇹 Five-time winner Cristiano Ronaldo in the Champions League:
⚽️ Most goals in history (136)
👕 Most appearances (178)
😮 Most goals in a season (17)
🤯 Most goals in knockout stages (67)
🔥 Only player to score in 11 straight games
🏆 Only player to score in 3 finals#UCL pic.twitter.com/SyRXiouyhH— UEFA Champions League (@ChampionsLeague) September 29, 2021
The all-time international top goal-scorer
Cristiano Ronaldo’s exploits have come not only at the club level but also at the international level. Wearing the national jersey, Ronaldo has played 196 games for his country. During this time, he scored an impressive 118 goals, which brought Portugal their first international trophy in 2016 when they defeated France to win the Euros.
This is their only international trophy to date and shows how the nation needed a player of his calibre to win their first honours in their history.
Read More:
Most Champions League goals
And we again come back to Cristiano Ronaldo and UEFA Champions League, where the Portuguese has scored 140 goals in 153 matches with an amazing 0.77 goals per match. This puts him above any other player in the tournament’s history. He is even ahead of Lionel Messi in that regard.
His goal-scoring exploits are one of the key reasons he has won the Champions League five times and remain the best player to play in the tournament.