He has been dropped and demoted, the superstar substitute. Ronaldo has been at his lowest ebb since his formative days. He was running with a point to prove but then perhaps he always has, even if it was to win his private battle with Messi, to accumulate ever more records, to take his goalscoring into new realms not since Vasco da Gama has a Portuguese spent so much time in previously uncharted territory.Īnd yet he has been confined to terrain he long hated this season: the bench, where he spent the entirety of a Manchester derby. If that was unexceptional, the pertinent part was that Ronaldo had sprinted from his own half, knees pumping, past a host of players to become the furthest man forward in case Coleman missed it.
I congratulate him on that performance,” he said.Īlex Iwobi curls home from long range (Reuters)Īs he sought his 701st, there was a moment in the second half when Seamus Coleman cleared a cross from Marcus Rashford. “When you score 700 goals, it's a huge performance, I'm really happy for him. Only two of those 700 have come for Erik ten Hag but the Manchester United manager was swift to appreciate the feat.
He averaged 50 every year for Real Madrid, and there was nine seasons at the Bernabeu. Since he became more single-minded about the pursuit of scoring, in 2006, he has averaged over 40 a season. He has averaged 35 a year for his clubs – even excluding his century of international goals – every year for 20 years, even though he was a showpony on the wing for the first few. The driving run, the drilled finish, the sheer professionalism about the process of scoring goals: it was Ronaldo in a nutshell. Few have cut in from the left wing with such regularity and such potency. Two decades and two days since he first scored for Sporting Lisbon against Moreirense, Cristiano Ronaldo became the inaugural member of the 700 club in a manner that felt familiar. More than the trio of Gary Lineker, Bobby Charlton and Paolo Rossi got when their efforts were combined. More than the Brazilian Ronaldo and Marco van Basten mustered between them.
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