Eat, sleep, score against Armenia, repeat. And repeat. Then repeat again for the next 13 years until there are no more rungs left to climb, and the entire Fifa-mapped world, from Oceania to Concacaf, has been coloured a shade of Cristiano.
Yes, I watched all 101 of Cristiano Ronaldo’s international goals so you don’t have to. It was a brilliantly absorbing watch too, a flick-book version of the journey from there to here, with a sense of the past beginning to stir, older Ronaldos coming into view, Ronaldos beyond the Ronaldos.
The 100-mark came up in midweek with two goals in Stockholm against Sweden, who seemed like fitting opponents. Looking back it was an overhyped head-to-head with Zlatan Ibrahimovic in a play-off for Brazil 2014 that seemed to provide the real moment of gear-shift for Ronaldo. He scored a brilliant, marauding hat-trick in the second leg – the same day he announced he would be opening a museum to himself – and in the process entered his own imperial phase as an international footballer.
Seven years later Ronaldo has 64 goals in his past 65 games. He is eight short of overhauling the perennial Ali Daei of Iran, an oddly comforting figure at the head of that list; to the extent getting past him almost seems transgressive, like flying to New York quicker than Concorde or growing taller than Robert Wadlow, the dear old beaming all-time giant of the Guinness Book of Records. And yet here we are all the same. It is tempting to drown a little in the numbers. The YouTube goal reel shows Ronaldo scoring against 41 different nations.
It shows him scoring against New Zealand in St Petersburg, North Korea in Cape Town, Saudi Arabia in Düsseldorf, scoring 24 times against the assorted states of the former Soviet Union.
There is something fascinating in this relentlessness, the ability to keep on doing the same thing with no discernible loss of energy, a unit of unceasing human appetite, a single boot volleying a ball into the Kazakhstan net for ever. But there is a narrative arc here too, a feeling of growth. Goals 1-20 are like postcards from some other place. Ronaldo looks loose and skinny but still with a kind of light around him, moving though this staging at a slightly different speed.
Three of his first four goals are headers, an early glimpse of those sculptural, neck-wrenching leaps. He seems to be discovering something, finding that when he moves in a certain way it is impossible for these fellow elite athletes to stay with him. For goal No 17, against Belgium, he performs four fast-twitch step-overs, feet battering the turf, then slides the ball with an outrageous, easy grace inside the far post. He is, before our eyes, becoming himself.
This is a key part of this story. Ronaldo may look like he is made from alien-engineered latex clay-modelling human substance. He may seem to have arrived ready made as an annihilating robot goal-hammer. For some he may have questions to answer still about his life away from the daily business of sport. But when it comes to football he is the opposite of this, an entirely human, self-made figure. When Manchester United played that famous pre-signing friendly in Lisbon his opposite number John O’Shea had to put on an oxygen mask at half-time. That was 17 years ago. Ronaldo still hurls himself with absolute certainty into the idea of winning, will weep on the pitch for the amusement of the internet, but just keep coming back, not giving a damn.
This is still the kid from Madeira whom José Mourinho called low class, who redid his teeth and redefined his body, who never stopped running, and has come to define Portuguese football in its golden age. It isn’t so hard to see why this might be inspiring for anyone who sees the world as closed or opaque, who wants to believe that with talent and effort you really can bend it to your will.
Mid-period Ronaldo, goals 30-70, gives a glimpse of that peak time, the supreme central striker. He is doing incredible things in tiny pockets of space, pirouetting away from mortal athletes on feet made from some weird combination of eagle feathers and high-tensile alien plastic.
The gap here is so great at times, the sheer scale of his talent as a finisher so obvious, you do start to wonder what Ronaldo is really doing here, where his motivation comes from. It is a lonely pursuit. No other player of his stature is actually doing this right now. Will anyone do it again? Forty-five of those 100 goals have come against minnows, from the Faroes to Panama to whipping boys Andorra. This is not to demean the achievement. It is what anyone has to do to get that far.
Will a player from a major nation again play this many games against minor teams? Changes to the schedule and the pressures of club football are pointing the other way as Ronaldo approaches the summit. The late goals fly by in a rush. From around the 70-80 mark everything is a cross, penalty or set piece.
Ronaldo is narrowing to a point, paring himself back. It seemed fitting that his 100th goal should arrive via a free-kick, followed by a dainty little chip-drive into the far corner, a reminder of his astonishing basic technique, the control of his body, his feet, the gravity around him.
Looking back at that goal reel, in among the bullet headers, the tap-ins, the dinks and spins, there is a sense of man constructing a monument to himself. For Ronaldo this may be the last significant mark to pass. One that may not, all things considered, be surpassed.
