Cristiano Ronaldo

• Born: February 5, 1985
• Place of Birth: Funchal, Madeira, Portugal

When Cristiano Ronaldo won his first Ballon d'Or as the European Footballer of the Year 2008 at the age of twenty-three, he was fulfilling a lifelong dream of being among the most successful football (soccer) players. From his humble beginnings in Madeira, Portugal, to his career with Manchester United, Real Madrid, and Juventus, popular elite European football clubs, Ronaldo worked hard to become the best, and in accepting his award he said that he wanted to be even better. Although initially criticized as a showoff by some, Ronaldo matured into an all-around player. By 2020, he had become the first player to win every domestic trophy in England, Spain, and Italy. In 2021, Ronaldo became the first player in the history of the sport to score 800 career goals.

Early Life

Cristiano Ronaldo dos Santos Aveiro was born on February 5, 1985, in Funchal, the capital of Madeira, Portugal. The youngest of four children, Ronaldo was named after his father's favorite actor, Ronald Reagan, who was president of the United States at the time of his birth. His mother, Dolores, worked as a cook and a cleaner, and his father, Dinis, was a gardener. Ronaldo has an older brother and two older sisters.

Ronaldo's father was also the kit man, or equipment manager, for a boys' soccer club, Clube de Futebol Andorinha. Young Ronaldo played for the team from the age of six to eight. In 1993, Fernão Barros Sousa, a youth coach with Clube Desportivo Nacional, another local soccer club, heard that there was a young player at Andorinha who was worth a look. A few months later, Ronaldo signed up with the club.

In 1996, Nacional won the Madeira Championship with its ten to twelve age group team, and eleven-year-old Ronaldo came to the attention of a scout from Sporting Clube de Portugal. He was signed by the club and moved to Lisbon, where he attended Sporting's Academia de Alcochete. After three years of training, Ronaldo debuted in 1999 in a game against Moreirense from northern Portugal, scoring two goals. He stayed with Sporting for seven years, becoming the first player in the club's history to play in the under-16, under-17, under-18, B team, and first team in the same season.

Rise to Fame

At the age of seventeen, Ronaldo first started to gain attention from professional football clubs. His performance in the Union of European Football Associations (UEFA) U-17 Championships in 2002 brought interest from the manager of the Liverpool Football Club, but he decided that Ronaldo still needed to develop further as a player. Manchester United, on the other hand, moved to establish a relationship with Sporting as a feeder club, a kind of training ground for new players. The agreement between Sporting and Manchester gave the latter the first right to sign players, a right that the club would need in 2003.

Following the UEFA Championships, Ronaldo began playing with the Sporting first team in September 2002, appearing in twenty-five games and scoring three goals. When Sporting inaugurated their new stadium on August 6, 2003, in a match against Manchester United, Ronaldo so impressed the team's manager, Sir Alex Ferguson, and the other players that the team moved to sign him. Other clubs, including Chelsea, Arsenal, Barcelona, Internazionale, and Juventus also expressed an interest in signing the young player, but the agreement that Manchester United had with Sporting meant that they had priority. On August 12, 2003, the team announced that they had signed Ronaldo to a five-year contract for a fee of £12.24 million.

Career with Manchester United

Four days later, on August 16, 2003, Ronaldo made his debut for Manchester United. While he had asked to be given the number twenty-eight shirt (which had been his number at Sporting), manager Ferguson decided to give him the number seven, most recently worn by David Beckham, who had recently left the team to play for Real Madrid. In the 2003–4 season, Ronaldo played in thirty-nine matches and scored eight goals, and was named the Sir Matt Busby Player of the Year.

Ronaldo's first years with Manchester United were not as spectacular as the club had hoped, although he did win fan awards as the Special Young Player of the Year for 2004–5 and 2005–6. On the other hand, these years were very good for him as an international team member. Ronaldo had debuted with the Portugal national team in August 2003, just days after signing with Manchester. In the 2004 UEFA Championships, Ronaldo was named to the all-star team. He scored seven goals in the qualifying tournaments for the 2006 FIFA World Cup and scored one goal in the cup itself.

The 2006 World Cup was important to Ronaldo's career for another reason. In a match between Portugal and England, Ronaldo's Manchester United teammate, Wayne Rooney, was kicked out of the game and the English press blamed Ronaldo for influencing the referee. The controversy died down after Rooney stated that his red card had nothing to do with Ronaldo, but the question of Ronaldo remaining with Manchester United had been raised. There were rumors that he was considering leaving the club for Real Madrid, but he stayed with Manchester, and signed an extension to his contract until 2012. The new contract set his salary at £120,000 per week, making him the club's highest-paid player.

Ronaldo also developed a reputation as a "diver," or a player who simulates a foul or injury. Often, the incident results in a penalty shot for the diver, and is seen as a cheap ploy by other players. In the 2006–7 season, there were several incidents where Ronaldo was accused of diving, including one against the Middlesbrough FC (Football Club).

The 2006–7 season ended well for Ronaldo, who scored twenty-three goals in fifty-three matches. He won the Professional Footballers' Association (PFA) Young Player of the Year, Players' Player of the Year, and Fans' Player of the Year awards. He was also named as the Portuguese Footballer of the Year and the Football Writers' Association (FWA) Footballer of the Year.

Ronaldo continued his success in the 2007–8 season, with forty-two goals in forty-nine matches, including his first hat trick (scoring three times in a game) on January 12, 2008, in a match against Newcastle United. He again won the titles of the PFA Players' Player of the Year, Fans' Player of the Year, and FWA Footballer of the Year, and added to these with the Barclays Golden Boot, the Barclays Merit Award, the European Golden Shoe, the FIFPro World Player of the Year, the UEFA Club Forward of the Year, and the UEFA Club Footballer of the Year. On December 2, 2008, he capped off the 2007–8 season with the Ballon d'Or, also known as the European Footballer of the Year.

Real Madrid, Juventus, and Beyond

During the off-season, in July 2008, Ronaldo had minor surgery performed on his right ankle. Although this caused him to miss the first month of the season, Ronaldo quickly bounced back, scoring his 100th and 101st goals in a match on November 15, 2008. Also over the summer of 2008, rumors about Ronaldo moving to Real Madrid surfaced again. At one point, it was reported that the team was willing to offer £100 million to Manchester United, along with a salary of £200,000 per week. While Ronaldo admitted that he would like to play in Spain, he put the matter to rest in August 2008, saying that he would stay with Manchester for at least another year.

The rumors did not stay quiet for long, however. In December 2008, a Spanish newspaper reported that Real Madrid had made a deal with Manchester United that would see Ronaldo moving to Spain in the summer of 2009. However, the following July, Ronaldo did join the Spanish club. In fact, he would remain with Real Madrid for the next nine years. During that period the striker broke records by scoring an impressive 451 goals in 438 matches. Ronaldo was also partly responsible for the club's victories in four European Cup tournaments, three Club World Cups, three UEFA Super Cups, two La Liga titles, two Copas del Rey, and two Spanish Super Cups. In July 2018 Ronaldo signed with Turin's Juventus for four years and £105 million. There he contributed to the team's success in the Serie A and Italian Super Cup.

As captain of the Portuguese national team from 2008 onward, Ronaldo led the team to the World Cups in 2010, 2014, and 2018, where Portugal progressed to the round of sixteen in 2010 and 2018. Ronaldo was personally responsible for scoring several of the team's goals in those appearances.

Ronaldo was named UEFA Best Player in Europe again in 2014 and 2016. By 2020 he had won three more Ballon d'Or awards and earned more than a billion dollars over his seventeen-year professional career. His remarkable earnings were attributable in part to lucrative sponsorship deals, such as a lifetime contract with Nike. After sitting out for three weeks to recover from COVID-19 in 2020, Ronaldo ended his time with Juventus by helping the team win the 2021 Coppa Italia Final. With that win, he became the first player to win every major domestic trophy in England, Spain, and Italy.

In August 2021, Ronaldo signed a two-year contract with his former team, Manchester United. In December of that year, Ronaldo scored his 800th career goal, becoming the first player to do so in the history of the sport of soccer. Ronaldo represented Portugal in the 2022 FIFA World Cup, but the team was eliminated by Morocco in the quarterfinals. Then, in December 2022, Ronaldo announced that he had signed with the Saudi Arabian club Al Nassr. Previously, in November of that year, Ronaldo departed Manchester United after he and the team mutually agreed to terminate his contract. His contract with Al Nassr gave him the highest football salary in history to date, giving him a guaranteed football salary of €90 million and corporate and sponsorship deals that would bring his annual salary to €200 million.

Rinaldo helped Al Nassr win the 2023 Arab Club Champions Cup during his first season with his new team. During the 2024 season, he set the record for most goals scored in a single Saudi Pro League campaign when he scored his thirty-fifth regular season goal in May. The accomplishment made him the first football player to finish as a top scorer in four different leagues.

Ronaldo has five living children. He dated Russian model Irina Shayk for more than five years and later partnered romantically with Spanish model Georgina Rodriguez, the mother of two of his daughters. Ronaldo also has his own clothing, undergarment, and shoe collections as well as a fragrance line.

Bibliography

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“Cristiano Ronaldo.” ESPN, 2024, www.espn.co.uk/football/player/bio/‗/id/22774/cristiano-ronaldo. Accessed 8 July 2024.

“Cristiano Ronaldo.” Real Madrid CF, 2024, www.realmadrid.com/en/about-real-madrid/history/football-legends/cristiano-ronaldo-dos-santos-aveiro. Accessed 8 July 2024.

Duerden, John. "What Does Ronaldo's Signing for Al Nassr Mean for Saudi Arabia?" Al Jazeera, 19 Jan. 2023, www.aljazeera.com/sports/2023/1/19/what-does-ronaldos-signing-for-al-nassr-mean-for-saudi-arabia. Accessed 8 July 2024.

Hahn, Jason Duaine. “Cristiano Ronaldo Becomes the First Soccer Player to Earn $1 Billion during Career.” People, 5 June 2020, people.com/sports/cristiano-ronaldo-becomes-first-soccer-player-to-earn-1-billion-during-career-forbes. Accessed 8 July 2024.

Riley, Daniel. “Cristiano Ronaldo’s Million-Dollar Day.” GQ, 19 Jan. 2016, www.gq.com/story/cristiano-ronaldo-gq-body-issue. Accessed 8 July 2024.

Summerscales, Robert. “Cristiano Ronaldo Leaves Manchester United after 'Mutually Agreed' Contract Termination.” FanNation Futbol, Sports Illustrated, 22 Nov. 2022, www.si.com/fannation/soccer/futbol/news/cristiano-ronaldo-leaves-manchester-united-as-contract-terminated. Accessed 8 July 2024.

Wright, Chris. “Cristiano Ronaldo Scores 800th Career Goal: Can He Reach 1,000 before He Retires?” ESPN, 2 Dec. 2021, www.espn.com/soccer/manchester-united-engman‗utd/story/4513401/cristiano-ronaldo-scores-800th-career-goal-can-he-reach-1,000-before-he-retires. Accessed 8 July 2024.