Breaking down Cristiano Ronaldo’s 900 career goals

Cristiano Ronaldo has now scored 900 goals in his professional career — the first as a 17-year-old in October 2002 and the most recent at the age of 39 on Thursday for Portugal against Croatia in the Nations League. He is, quite simply, one of the greatest goalscorers the sport has ever seen.

But what is the highest number of goals he has scored in a season? Has Ronaldo found the net more often in his thirties than he did in his twenties? Which teams has he scored against the most times? And is he the top scorer in the sport’s history?

Here, The Athletic answers all those questions and more in a detailed breakdown of the former Manchester United and Real Madrid player’s extraordinary scoring record.

Here is the number of goals Ronaldo has scored for each side he has played for. In total, he has played 1,236 games.

Ronaldo, who began his career as a winger, failed to score in the first four games of his career — before finding the net twice for Sporting against Moreirense in the Primeira Liga (the Portuguese top flight) on October 7, 2002 in his fifth match as a professional. His five goals for Sporting all came in his debut campaign as a professional footballer in 2002-03.

Between scoring his final goal for Sporting in December 2002 and his first goal for Manchester United in November 2003, Ronaldo went 27 games without scoring (16 for Sporting, nine for United and two for Portugal) — by far the longest drought of his career (the next longest is 15 matches).

Ronaldo scored 118 goals for Manchester United in his first spell at the club, which ended in 2009, before adding another 27 in his second stint from September 2021 to November 2022.

Ronaldo scores against Arsenal in the 2009 Champions League semi-final second leg (Etsuo Hara/Getty Images)

Real Madrid (450 goals in 438 games) are the only side Ronaldo has a goals-per-game average of above 1.00 for. The team at which he has the next-best record is his current side Al Nassr, with an average of 0.92 goals per game.

He is the all-time top scorer for both Real Madrid (surpassing Raul’s mark of 323 in October 2015) and Portugal (moving past Pauleta’s total of 47 in March 2014).

Here are Ronaldo’s 900 goals broken down by season.

Ronaldo’s 69 goals in 2011-12 (he turned 27 in February of that campaign) is the most he has ever scored in a season — finding the net 60 times for Real Madrid and on nine occasions for Portugal.

Those 69 goals came in 69 games but, perhaps surprisingly, Ronaldo failed to score in 26 of those matches. His enormous total was boosted by seven hat-tricks — including five in 26 games in an incredible run from late August to mid-December.

Those 69 goals in 2011-12 were two more than Ronaldo managed for club and country in his first four seasons at Manchester United combined (67).

The 2018-19 season, when Ronaldo joined Italian club Juventus, was the first in which he failed to reach the 50-goal mark since 2009-10 (his maiden campaign at Real Madrid).

Yet Ronaldo, who turns 40 in February, has remained a prolific goalscorer well past the normal retirement age for most footballers.

Ronaldo scored 440 goals in his twenties and has 437 goals in his thirties so, with five months left as a 39-year-old, the five-time UEFA Champions League winner will be very confident of eclipsing the total he reached aged 20 to 29.

Here is the breakdown of Ronaldo’s goals by body part.

The goal that came via his thigh was for Manchester United against West Ham United in the Premier League in May 2008 and the one with his elbow came against Athletic Bilbao in La Liga in October 2014 for Real Madrid.

If you excluded Ronaldo’s goals with his stronger right foot, he would still have scored 326 times — four more times than Robin van Persie did in his entire career and just 19 fewer than Diego Maradona’s total of 345.

Here is where on the pitch Ronaldo has scored his 900 goals from.

The 164 penalties (from 194 taken) means that 18.2 per cent of his goals have come from the spot. Meanwhile, 14.6 per cent have come from outside the box.

Of those 131 goals from distance, 63 have been free kicks (Ronaldo has scored 64 free kicks in his career but one was indirect from inside the box and due to the exceptionally short pass he received before striking the ball, Opta class it as a free-kick goal).

The first of those free kicks was also his first goal for Manchester United, coming against Portsmouth in November 2003. Arguably the best of them also came against Portsmouth, with his sensational strike in 2008 leaving goalkeeper David James helplessly rooted to the spot.

Ronaldo has scored against 196 different teams in his career, with Moreirense the first and Al Ain, from the United Arab Emirates, the side he scored against for the first time most recently (in the AFC Champions League in March of this year).

He has scored against 20 sides ten times or more.

Of those 20 teams, Tottenham, Luxembourg, Juventus and Roma are the only ones that are not Spanish clubs.

And here are the teams Ronaldo has played the most often and never scored against.

Ronaldo has scored 66 hat-tricks in his career, the first as a 22-year-old playing on the wing for Sir Alex Ferguson’s Manchester United and the most recent as a 39-year-old for Al Nassr in the Saudi Pro League. Ten of them have been ‘perfect’ hat-tricks — scoring with each of his right foot, left foot and head.

He has scored five goals in a game twice — both coming in La Liga in 2015. For the second of those, against Espanyol, Ronaldo scored all five from inside the box.

Here are Ronaldo’s goals, broken down by competition (hover/click on the smaller boxes).

He is the all-time record scorer in the following competitions: European Cup/Champions League, European Championship, European Championship qualifying, UEFA World Cup qualifying and the Club World Cup.

Here are the five players to have provided the most assists for Ronaldo over the course of his career.

Unsurprisingly, all of them were Real Madrid team-mates. Karim Benzema, who tops the list, is the player who Ronaldo has played alongside the most often in his career. The duo played together in 355 matches (all for Madrid), but are now on different teams in the Saudi Pro League.

The two players who have provided the most assists for Ronaldo for Portugal are Joao Moutinho and Ricardo Quaresma (both eight).

The section of games in which Ronaldo has scored the most often is the 76th-90th minutes. The segment he has scored the least in is the opening 15 minutes.

He has scored eight goals in extra time, with the first of those a stunning header against Barcelona to secure victory in the 2011 Copa del Rey final.

Ronaldo has scored 23 goals in finals, with four of those coming in the Champions League. In the history of the competition (including when it was the European Cup) only Real Madrid legends Alfredo Di Stefano and Ferenc Puskas (both seven) have scored more in finals.

Three of the 23 goals in finals have been scored for Manchester United, 15 for Real Madrid, two for Juventus and three for Al Nassr. He never played in a final for Sporting and failed to find the net in the finals of Euro 2004, Euro 2016 and the 2019 Nations League for Portugal.

So, does Ronaldo’s 900 goals make him the top scorer in the history of football?

It’s complicated.

The International Federation of Football History & Statistics (IFFHS) does consider Ronaldo to be the highest-scoring player of all time, with Lionel Messi second on 838 and Pele third on 762.

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The IFFHS is a highly reputable source that is trusted on the history of the game. However, a full record of every football match ever played and the goalscorers does not exist and, what’s more, the status of many games in history (i.e. whether they were official matches or not) remains disputed. For example, Pele claimed to have scored almost 1,300 goals — but it is now widely considered that many of those came in unofficial club friendly matches in Brazil.

The Rec.Sport.Soccer Statistics Foundation (RSSSF), another well-regarded organisation when it comes to football statistics, have Ronaldo fourth on their list.

According to them, German Erwin Helmchen — whose career lasted from 1924 to 1951 — scored at least 989 goals. And then there is Josef Bican, an Austrian-Czech striker born in 1913, who they say scored a minimum of 950 goals and also Englishman Ronnie Rooke (born in 1911) with, by their maths, at least 934.

However, these totals include goals in regional leagues and unofficial tournaments and it is a matter of ongoing debate whether they should be counted or not.

One thing is certain, Ronaldo would love to score 1,000 goals. Not only would it represent an enormous milestone, it might also finally put to bed the so-far unanswerable question of who has scored the most goals in the history of football.

He scored 57 goals for club and country last season (with 50 of those for Al Nassr) so if he keeps fit, and given that he is playing in Saudi Arabia, Ronaldo will have a shot at reaching 1,000 by the end of the 2025-26 season — a campaign in which he will turn 41.

(Graphic showing goals by body part: Drew Jordan)

(Header photos: Getty Images)