In defence of Cristiano Ronaldo

Cristiano Ronaldo is one of the most scrutinised players in Football history. Today, I explain why he is also one of the best. This and more this week on Football Latest.

We are one week into February 2025, and Football has already been unbelievable this month. Not only have we had some great games, like Forest battering Brighton 7-0 at the City Ground, but also some historic moments, the most notable of which was that Cristiano Ronaldo turned 40 years old. Few would have predicted that at 40, Ronaldo would still be playing professional football and maintaining his incredible scoring standards. While not at the highest level, 82 goals in 90 games for Al Nassir is still a massively impressive feat for a 40 year old. Today, we will discuss the career of this footballing icon, but first, we will cover Forest’s incredible win over Brighton.

Nottingham Forest 7 - 0 Brighton

This was Forest’s biggest top flight win in England since 1991, and the scoreline definitely reflected the game. The first goal came when Morgan Gibbs-White burst into the box from the wing and played a ball in towards Chris Wood that was deflected into the back of the net by Lewis Dunk. Gibbs-White clearly wanted his name on the scoresheet after Dunk’s own goal, because shortly after the opener, he scored the second goal of the game from a great header after a Forest corner. The entire team seemed to take their turn scoring a few goals, and up next was Chris Wood. He scored his first goal when Elanga delivered a brilliant lobbed ball into the box for Chris Wood to head down into the back of the net.

While Danny Welbeck almost scored down the other end of the pitch for Brighton, hitting the bar and having the ball an inch from crossing the line, Forest continued their dominance when early in the second half, Elanga and Wood linked up again for Wood to score his second. The hattrick came for Wood when Gibbs-White was sloppily brought down in the box, and Wood dispatched the penalty to make it 5-0 to Forest.

Forest hadn’t finished the scoring yet, when after the ball bounced around in the box for seemingly an eternity, Neco Williams scored with a clinical finish to give Forest a whopping 6-0 lead in the 89th minute. But as they had been for periods of the whole game, Brighton gave the ball away in the 91st minute, giving the ball straight to Jota Silva, who powerfully placed the ball into the back of the net to finish Forest’s scoring and make the final score 7-0 to Forest, sealing an unbelievable win.

40 years of Cristiano Ronaldo

After decades in the game, nobody can deny that Ronaldo is one of the greatest football players to ever play the game. Ronaldo has over a thousand total career appearances, and of course, most notably, he has over 900 official senior career goals for club and country, making him the top goalscorer of all time. Despite this, he is incredibly criticised and often misunderstood as a player. Today, let’s talk a bit about the career of this football legend.

Despite (in my opinion) quite popular belief, being a goalscorer doesn’t sum up Ronaldo’s career. Early in his career, mostly in his Manchester United days, he was perhaps more known for his incredible dribbling ability combined with his creativity and eye for goal. There is nothing wrong with being nothing more than a player who stays in the box waiting for chances to score, but Ronaldo was far from that kind of player, though people often suggest that he was. It was only later in his career that he switched to primarily playing a more traditional centre-forward role; up until that point, he had mostly operated off the left or the right wing for Manchester United and Real Madrid.

People often criticize Ronaldo’s move to Saudi Arabia and argue that his immense goal tally is massively helped by playing easier oppositions, but there are some clear counters to this argument. First of all, he spent 3 years playing for Juventus, in an Italian league that can be notoriously defensive. Despite this, he still achieved unbelievable goalscoring numbers in this competitive and often defensive league. If that wasn’t enough, the fact that he leads the Champions League, the peak of club football, in goals should demonstrate perfectly that Ronaldo scores against any opposition, perhaps even particularly more difficult ones.

At the end of the day, Ronaldo is possibly the most scrutinised footballers ever, but he has to be considered one of the all time greats in club and international football. With ridiculous numbers of individual and team accolades to his name, discrediting Cristiano Ronaldo remains a popular yet difficult task. Do you think that Ronaldo is the greatest player of all time? Let me know by answering the poll below and leaving a comment to tell me why or why not.

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