In Portugal’s match against Croatia, Cristiano Ronaldo became the first football player to score his 900th career goal. It occurred during a Lisbon-hosted UEFA Nations League match.Nuno Mendes’s perfectly timed cross allowed Ronaldo to score from a close range. He was able to put the ball past Livakovic, the goalkeeper for Croatia.
Lionel Messi is his closest competitor who has scored 838 goals so far.
This achievement happened right after the criticism of Ronaldo’s recent performance in the EURO Cup by the commentators. With five games under his belt, the 39- year old failed to score.
The 5 time Ballon d’Or winner began his professional career with Sporting CP, where he scored 5 goals in 28 matches. Moreover, in 2003 he was signed by the renowned Sir Alex Ferguson of Manchester United. Ronaldo continued to play for the club for 6 years and managed to score 145 goals for it.
When he moved to Real Madrid in 2009, his career took off and he went on to win several trophies. He was able to become one of the consistent goal scorers. In addition to 2 La Liga titles, he also won 4 FIFA Club World Clubs and 5 UEFA Champions league. CR7 became Real Madrid’s all time best scorer with 450 goals under his name in the nine years. After shifting to Juventus in 2018, he scored 101 goals in four years.
After this time, Ronaldo joined Manchester United once again for two years, he scored 29 goals before taking off for Al Nassr in 2022. There he has made 74 appearances and scored 68 goals for the Saudi Arabian team so far.
“It means a lot. It was a milestone I wanted to reach for a long time. I knew I would reach this number because as I continue to play, it would happen naturally,” Ronaldo said in an interview right after the match.
Moreover, Ronaldo talked openly about his career and his goals for the future with former teammate Rio Ferdinand on his YouTube channel. While hitting 900 goals was a monumental achievement, he made it clear that now he is all set for a greater task: scoring 1000 career goals.
“I want to reach 1,000 goals. If I don’t have any injuries, this for me is the most important (thing), I want that. For me, the best mark that I can have in football is to reach, first, 900 goals. After, my challenge is to be at 1,000 goals,” he stated.
