{"id":7507,"date":"2026-11-05T21:51:46","date_gmt":"2026-11-05T21:51:46","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/play-live.eu\/?p=7507"},"modified":"2026-11-05T21:51:46","modified_gmt":"2026-11-05T21:51:46","slug":"goalscorers-have-personality-and-a-big-ego-ronaldo-was-the-best-at-all-that","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/play-live.eu\/?p=7507","title":{"rendered":"Goalscorers Have Personality And A Big Ego. Ronaldo Was The Best At All That."},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"subnav-title ff-ffc bold fs-23 lh-25 uc pd-b-10\">\n            POPULAR SEARCHES\n          <\/p>\n<p class=\"subnav-title ff-ffc bold fs-23 lh-25 uc pd-b-10\">\n            BROWSE BY\n          <\/p>\n<p class=\"ff-h fs-16 lh-1pt6 mg-b-15 article-content\" data-v-baabd5ed>By the time Cristiano Ronaldo was 12 years old, the decision had been made for him to leave his home on the island of Madeira and move to the Portuguese capital of Lisbon. Here was a boy, who shared a bedroom with his three siblings, the son of a hospitality cleaner and a father who was a war veteran and struggled with alcoholism, ready to take his first main step into the unknown.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ff-h fs-16 lh-1pt6 mg-b-15 article-content\" data-v-baabd5ed>There were obstacles when he arrived at Sporting CP&#8217;s youth academy. Plenty of them. Ronaldo, in fact, struggled with school so much that he was once expelled for throwing a chair at a teacher. He eventually persuaded his mother the unthinkable\u2014 that education was not a priority and essentially, he pleaded with her and his Sporting tutor to allow him to quit and focus on football alone. It was obviously a gamble.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ff-h fs-16 lh-1pt6 mg-b-15 article-content\" data-v-baabd5ed>He has even said it before. Had he not become a professional footballer, due to leaving school so early, Ronaldo had probably envisioned a life as a local fisherman.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ff-h fs-16 lh-1pt6 mg-b-15 article-content\" data-v-baabd5ed>Then there was the heart problem. At 15, he was diagnosed with<i> tachycardia \u2014 a<\/i> condition that caused an abnormally fast heart rate\u2014even whilst he rested. This prompted surgery that eventually delivered a full recovery but regardless, it was a terrifying situation for a young kid to deal with. But the surgery was successful and from that moment on, Cristiano Ronaldo\u2019s full story began.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ff-h fs-16 lh-1pt6 mg-b-15 article-content\" data-v-baabd5ed>Here\u2019s the other fact that most people forget. Ronaldo is not his last name. It\u2019s Dos Santos Aveiro. Ronaldo was a name given by his father in honor of former U.S. President Ronald Reagan.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ff-h fs-16 lh-1pt6 mg-b-15 article-content\" data-v-baabd5ed>I presume it\u2019s only right for Cristiano to have the name as Ronaldo, because like Reagan, he is known for being deeply disciplined with a slightly detached strategy against opponents. Like Reagan, a former actor, Ronaldo has also never been one to shy away from the limelight and that\u2019s essentially what turned him into the player he ultimately became.<\/p>\n<p><span>(Photo by Philipp Schmidli\/Getty Images)<\/span> <\/p>\n<p class=\"ff-h fs-16 lh-1pt6 mg-b-15 article-content\" data-v-baabd5ed>There is a perfection to Ronaldo\u2019s football that is both inspiring and overwhelming. His search for an omnipotent identity has always been his greatest strength and at times, his Achilles hee. Whilst Lionel Messi\u2019s diminutive stature and introspective personality captivated fans from one dimension, Ronaldo&#8217;s focus was a flawless pursuit of impeccable athleticism and force. His training regime and eating habits are ludicrous to you or me, but it\u2019s his obsession with discipline that gave him this 23-year career on the international stage.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p class=\"ff-h fs-16 lh-1pt6 mg-b-15 article-content\" data-v-baabd5ed>With regard to his actual game, I have always said that Ronaldo, to me, is the greatest goalscorer and finisher the men\u2019s game will ever witness. And this, my friends, is the hardest job in football. To score goals.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p class=\"ff-h fs-16 lh-1pt6 mg-b-15 article-content\" data-v-baabd5ed>His 146 goals for Portugal, each one of them, were gigantic statements. Even the penalties. It\u2019s why he celebrates with\u00a0<i>&#8220;SIUUUU&#8221; \u2013 <\/i>an exaggerated expression of &#8220;si&#8221; \u2014 the Spanish and Portuguese word for yes. The celebration is an acceptance of grandiosity. A door of pomposity where the stadium, in unison, coronates him after landing on the ground after the 180 degree jump.<\/p>\n<p><span>(Getty)<\/span> <!--&gt;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"ff-h fs-16 lh-1pt6 mg-b-15 article-content\" data-v-baabd5ed>The entire notion of the celebration, now glorified and globalized around the world, is Ronaldo\u2019s way of telling the opponent, the stadium, the world\u2014that at this very moment\u2014he is the one in charge.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"ff-h fs-16 lh-1pt6 mg-b-15 article-content\" data-v-baabd5ed>The longevity of his career is also something to truly respect and appreciate. When he played his first European Championship, Lamine Yamal was three. Ronaldo is the only player to have featured at six Euros. It\u2019s almost inconceivable to believe that the one he led Portugal as champion after a 1-0 win over then-host France came in 2016.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"ff-h fs-16 lh-1pt6 mg-b-15 article-content\" data-v-baabd5ed>Alongside Messi and Guillermo \"Memo\" Ochoa, he has also appeared in six World Cup editions (though Messi and Ronaldo were the ones to play in each one). Across the two marquee competitions (Euros and World Cup), Ronaldo also scored 25 goals. No other player has that record. Since 2004, Ronaldo has scored at least one goal for Portugal for 23 straight calendar years. He also holds the record for most men\u2019s international appearances with 234 and his quest to score 1,000 goals will continue during his time with his club Al-Nassr.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"ff-h fs-16 lh-1pt6 mg-b-15 article-content\" data-v-baabd5ed>These are incredible numbers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"ff-h fs-16 lh-1pt6 mg-b-15 article-content\" data-v-baabd5ed>The five-time Ballon d\u2019Or winner will retire from Portugal, however, without a World Cup and this will undoubtedly remain a ghost that he will never be able to scare away. His recent altercation with national team manager Jorge Jesus after leaving camp in the previous window, followed by a lengthy statement on social media, was the reluctance of a once-complete specimen admitting that his powers are dwindling. He just didn\u2019t want to come to terms with it. In the same way Narcissus died because of being too enamored with his own reflection, I think Ronaldo\u2019s supercilious personality often became his own worst enemy.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"ff-h fs-16 lh-1pt6 mg-b-15 article-content\" data-v-baabd5ed>But this truthfully is what made Ronaldo and why, as I said, he will go down as the greatest finisher in the history of the sport. It\u2019s his selfish, vindictive hunger for goals that built this transformer. Goalscorers, by nature, have to be selfish. They need an ego if they are to succeed and there has never been a higher example of goalscoring success than Ronaldo.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"ff-h fs-16 lh-1pt6 mg-b-15 article-content\" data-v-baabd5ed>So there you have it. Cristiano Ronaldo leaves Portugal as the nation\u2019s greatest player and alongside Messi, there is obviously a conversation about his legacy as the greatest in history. It\u2019s not up to me to tell you otherwise, either or, but to remind you that in their heyday, we were all blessed with having witnessed the greatest rivalry in football history\u2014perhaps in any sport.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"ff-h fs-16 lh-1pt6 mg-b-15 article-content\" data-v-baabd5ed>Cristiano Ronaldo, the boy from Madeira who needed to slow down his heart, finally accepts that it\u2019s time to put on the brakes and close the curtains on the international stage.<\/p>\n\n--><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>POPULAR SEARCHES BROWSE BY By the time Cristiano Ronaldo was 12 years old, the decision had been made for him to leave his home on the island of Madeira and move to the Portuguese capital of Lisbon. Here was a boy, who shared a bedroom with his three siblings, the son of a hospitality cleaner [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":7506,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[29],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7507","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-soccer"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/play-live.eu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7507","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/play-live.eu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/play-live.eu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/play-live.eu\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=7507"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/play-live.eu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7507\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/play-live.eu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/7506"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/play-live.eu\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=7507"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/play-live.eu\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=7507"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/play-live.eu\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=7507"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}