Cristiano settles the score at the World Cup

Cristiano Ronaldo stunned the football world with his brace against Uzbekistan at the age of 41. After yet another historic performance, former teammates Roy Keane and Rio Ferdinand rushed to defend him against his critics.

“Why would you ever doubt him?” Roy Keane told ITV Sport. Rio Ferdinand, one of Ronaldo’s most vocal supporters, summed up his reaction in a simple post on X: “Shut up!”

Ronaldo himself also had a message for those who continue to question him: “When I’m not playing well, it’s ‘Cristiano is finished’, ‘Cristiano is old’, ‘Cristiano is retired’...”

It was a clear response to his critics.

These are some of the astonishing records he now holds.

Ronaldo is the first player in football history to score in six different World Cups. He found the net in 2006, 2010, 2014, 2018, 2022 and now 2026, scoring at least once in every tournament he has played. No other player has achieved that feat.

At 41 years, four months and 18 days old, Ronaldo became the oldest player ever to score a brace in a World Cup match. He is also the second-oldest goalscorer in World Cup history, behind Cameroon’s Roger Milla, who scored at 42 years and 39 days.

In 2013, Ronaldo scored 69 goals, finishing the year as the world’s leading goalscorer. He netted 59 times for Real Madrid and added 10 more for Portugal.

During the 2014-15 season, Ronaldo scored 61 goals in 54 matches, averaging 1.13 goals per game. Of those goals, 48 came in La Liga. It remains the highest-scoring season by a Real Madrid player in the club’s history and the most prolific campaign of Ronaldo’s professional career.

With 145 goals in European competitions, Ronaldo is the all-time leading scorer on the continent. His tally includes 141 goals in the UEFA Champions League, two in the Europa League and two in the UEFA Super Cup. His favourite opponents in the Champions League are Juventus, against whom he scored 10 goals, followed by Bayern Munich and Ajax with nine each. The club and stadium where he has scored the most goals are Real Madrid and the Santiago Bernabéu, with 106 and 53 goals respectively.

In the 2013-14 season, Ronaldo set the record for the most goals in a single Champions League campaign, scoring 17 goals in just 11 matches. His average of 1.55 goals per game remains one of the most remarkable scoring rates ever recorded in a European competition.

According to FIFA, Ronaldo is football’s all-time leading goalscorer with 975 official goals. Of those, 145 have come for Portugal, another record. He now stands just 25 goals away from becoming the first player in history to reach 1,000 officially recognised career goals. Pelé surpassed that figure during his career, but a number of his goals are not officially recognised.

Ronaldo is also Real Madrid’s all-time leading scorer, having scored an extraordinary 451 goals in just 438 official matches, more than one goal per game on average. His goals were spread across every competition he played in: 312 in La Liga, 105 in the Champions League, 22 in the Copa del Rey, six in the Club World Cup, four in the Supercopa de España and two in the UEFA Super Cup.

He is the all-time leading scorer in European Championship history, including qualifying matches, and the only player to score in five different European Championship final tournaments. Ronaldo also holds the records for most European Championship final tournament appearances (six), most appearances in European competition matches for a national team (74), most goals in European Championship finals (14), most goals in the competition including qualifiers (55), and he is the only player to score hat-tricks in three different European Championships.

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