Cristiano Ronaldo returned to action with Al Nassr in a hard-fought 3-2 victory against Al Okhdood on matchday 31 of the Saudi Pro League, which featured the emblem’s scoring participation to get closer to an absolute record in football and distance himself of Lionel Messi in the fight to perpetuate himself as the sport’s all-time top scorer.
The 39-year-old attacker converted the partial 2-0 at the border of the first quarter of an hour almost without meaning to, since Ali Al-Hassan sent a very powerful cross from close range, the ball ended up bouncing to CR7 in the six-yard box and He entered the net after what had been the opening of the result by Marcelo Brozović. Already in the second half, Hassan Al-Habib and Savior Godwin surprised The International with the score 2-2 midway through the final half.
At that moment, frustration took hold of Ronaldo and, after an infringement committed by a rival against a teammate, he took out his anger with a very angry protest at the referee, who was forced to show him the yellow card. In added time, Brozović gave the final victory to the visiting team, which still has a mathematical chance of fighting for the title with three days left to go.
Cristiano’s personal production allowed him to reach 53 goals in 53 games this season, in addition to being the leader of the local championship’s scoring table with 33 goals, ahead of Aleksandar Mitrović (24), from Al Hilal, and Abderrazak Hamdallah (19), from Al Ittihad. Furthermore, he has 18 goals in 2024, still far from the 91 achieved by Messi in 2012 between Barcelona and the Argentine national team.
However, he is going for another record that La Pulga does not have: scoring 900 official goals. The Portuguese forward has 891 celebrations in 1,221 matches throughout his career, 62 celebrations have been with the Al Nassr of Saudi Arabia shirt since his arrival at the beginning of 2023. To these numbers, we must add what he did at Real Madrid ( 450), Manchester United (145), Juventus (101), Sporting Lisbon (5) and the Portuguese national team (128).
In the middle of a FIFA date with the national team, Cristiano Ronaldo had referred to the opportunity to reach that historic number of shouts: “It’s going to be difficult (to reach 1000 goals), but it’s about seeing how I am mentally, my motivation. Yes physically my legs treat me as well as I treat them. We’ll see, they are small stages. “First we have to reach 900 and I think I will achieve it.”
On the other hand, he stretched his difference with Lionel Messi in the Olympus of this sport. According to the official statistics of the MessiStats site, the Rosario star registers a total of 833 goals and 372 assists in the 1,057 games he played in his career, dividing the figures between Barcelona (672 goals and 269 assists in 778 games), the Argentine national team ( 106 goals and 54 assists in 180 games), PSG (32 goals and 34 assists in 75 games) and Inter Miami (23 goals and 15 assists in 24 games). In this way, Cristiano leads the world champion by 58 points as the highest scoring player in the history of football.
Both will have the possibility of continuing to star in this contest thousands of kilometers away with the Copa América and the Euro Cup. In the case of the Bug, Portugal will debut on June 18 against the Czech Republic at the Leipzig Stadium in Germany for the first day of Group F. Their agenda will continue on the 22nd against Turkey in Dortmund and on the 26th of that month against Georgia in Gelsenkirchen. It will also be a propitious event in the fight to be the top historical scorer at the national team level, an item led by Cristiano with 128 goals compared to Leo’s 106).
Al Nassr remains second in the Saudi Pro League with 77 points, the runner-up position has already been secured because Al Ahli (55) cannot catch up and a place in the next Asian Champions League is guaranteed. Al Hilal is the leader (86) and will be champions if they get a point in the next games against Al Hazm (L), Al Nassr (V), Al-Ta’ee (L) and Al Wahda (V).
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