Compile a list of the best players in the history of the European Championships and Cristiano Ronaldo would be near the top, if not at it. So, too, were a similar exercise conducted for the Champions League. It is indisputable he is Portugal’s greatest ever player, certainly one of Real Madrid’s finest and, for his first spell more than his second, a Manchester United great. Assess the outstanding footballers of all time and Ronaldo would figure in the top 10; it is just a question where and it is safe to say millions of his devotees would put him above everyone else, Lionel Messi in particular.
So why is Ronaldo not in this selection of the World Cup’s top 50 players? Because he is not in the top 50 players in the history of the World Cup. At the risk of turning on fellow voters who did pick him, he isn’t in the best 100. His greatness has come in other competitions, not this.
He has famously never scored in the World Cup’s knockout stages; by way of comparison, he has 67 goals in the Champions League’s knockout stages, four of them in finals. Indeed, in 2022, Portugal dropped Ronaldo for the last 16 and his replacement Goncalo Ramos promptly scored a hat-trick in the 6-1 demolition of Switzerland.
Some of Ronaldo’s feats lie in the land of longevity. He has played in five World Cups, a joint record; he and Messi are set to become the first to appear in six. He is alone in scoring in all five, and it seems a safe bet he will score in a sixth. A tap-in or a penalty against DR Congo, Uzbekistan or Colombia, however, should not mean much more than just another statistical marker.
To examine Ronaldo’s record in more detail, arguably his best World Cup was his first; certainly it was Portugal’s finest in his time. Luiz Felipe Scolari’s team reached the 2006 semi-finals and if English audiences remember a 21-year-old Ronaldo’s contribution mainly for an infamous wink when Wayne Rooney was sent off in the quarter-finals; the United winger scored the spot kick in the shootout to eliminate Sven-Goran Eriksson’s team.
But in 2010, Portugal failed to score in three of their four games, including their last-16 defeat to eventual winners Spain. Ronaldo’s only goal was the seventh in a rout of North Korea. He was already captain, the world’s most expensive player and a Ballon d’Or winner. He did not perform as such, however.
He was undeniably unfortunate in 2014 that, after his heroics to earn Portugal their spot in Brazil – with a play-off hat-trick in a game that finished Zlatan Ibrahaimovic 2 Ronaldo 3 – he was not fully fit for a tournament when he was otherwise at the peak of his powers. He had scored 61 times for Real in the season, helped them claim la decima, their 10th European Cup, but while he got a late winner against Ghana, Portugal exited in the group stages. It was a tough group, but underachievement nonetheless.
Four years on, Ronaldo delivered his greatest 90 minutes in a World Cup game, starting with a hat-trick in a 3-3 draw with neighbours Spain. He got a winner against Morocco, too, but Portugal went out in the last 16 to Uruguay, with Ronaldo drawing another blank.
Then came 2022 and a frankly hideous World Cup, his own failings perhaps being compounded when Messi won the competition as captain, with two goals in the final. Ronaldo scored for the fifth straight tournament, but it was a penalty. He claimed a goal that Bruno Fernandes scored. As he was talking his way out of United, his performances meant he was dropped from the Portugal team by a manager, in Fernando Santos, who had been a mentor.
The sense at the time was that his World Cup career ended with the quarter-final defeat to Morocco, when he came off the bench; instead, he went on, looking an impediment to his own team in Euro 2024 and, ridiculously, being rendered eligible for the start of the 2026 World Cup despite his red card against Ireland in qualifying.
He will arrive in the United States as the possessor of the records for most caps (226 so far) and goals (143) in international football. He may yet get a World Cup clash with Messi, in a possible quarter-final against Argentina. And perhaps, at the sixth time of asking, Ronaldo will reach the pantheon of the World Cup greats. But he is not there yet.
