Ronaldo – Respect the name

In a time where multiverses are all the rage, it’s hard not to apply the What If? treatment to football. What if the ball hadn’t crossed the line (Luis García, Geoff Hurst, or had — Frank Lampard), what if Higuaín had finished those chances in the World Cup Final? What if West Ham had kept their young players together (read more here vs Class of ’92).

But the biggest What If? for a whole host of football fans is on Ronaldo. Not Fat Ronaldo, just Ronaldo. The Phenomenon. Which, if we’re honest, is a pretty cool nickname for a footballer. And for those of us lucky enough to have watched him at the time, it wasn’t an exaggeration. He really was unlike anything that we’d seen before. The perfect combination of flair, pace, power, ruthlessness and a complete lack of respect for goalkeepers — he scored 88 goals just by rounding keepers during his career. For context, Dennis Bergkamp scored 87 Premier League goals in his 11 seasons at Arsenal.

So when some of us see his name being disrespected by keyboard warriors, who likely never saw him play, it can grate. I’ll just leave these quotes here.

“Without injuries, he would have been the greatest in history”

Diego Maradona

“Ronaldo, El Fenomeno. Cristiano Ronaldo and Leo Messi have had longer careers, they have remained at the top every day for 15 years. However, if we are talking strictly about talent and skill, nobody surpasses Ronaldo. When he was at Barcelona with Bobby Robson, I realised that he was the best player I’d ever seen take to the field”

José Mourinho — he coached Ronaldo, and managed Cristiano Ronaldo

“For me, Ronaldo is the greatest. He was as [good as] Pelé. There was nobody like him. No one has influenced both football and the players who emerged as Ronaldo”

Zlatan Ibrahimović

“Without hesitation, Ronaldo is the best player I ever saw.”

Zinedine Zidane

“The quality that Ronaldo had was just, for me, the best that I have seen.…He was just out of this world”

Thierry Henry

“Ronaldo [Nazário] was a phenomenon. Of all the strikers I have seen, for me, he was the best. An impressive player from any aspect.”

Lionel Messi

You get the point.

But not everyone does. “He only scored 400+ goals, that’s half as many as Cristiano/Messi/etc…..” Which is correct, but which only tells half the story. So what if he hadn’t gotten injured. Just how good was he before that Sunday afternoon in Lecce in November 1999.

Setting the scene

FIFA World Player of the Year, 1996, aged 20. The youngest winner there has ever been. He had just scored 47 goals in 49 games in a single season for Barcelona — finishing with medals for the Copa del Rey and European Cup Winners’ Cup. And he had a cool arms-outstretched-Christ-the-Redeemer celebration. Simply put, there was zero doubt who the best player in the world was. A year later and the same outcome — FIFA World Player of the Year, 1997, aged 21. He had moved to Inter for a second world-record fee, dropped into the hardest league on earth, and scored 25 in 32 in Serie A whilst scoring the winner in the UEFA Cup Final with that iconic goal. The Golden Ball at the 1998 World Cup, also at 21, in a tournament Brazil lost but he was still voted the best player.

And the lead role in the best football advert of all time.

For comparison purposes, Messi collected his first Ballon d’Or at 22. Cristiano at 23. Mbappé still hasn’t. Haaland still hasn’t. Kane is close to one at 32. I don’t think it’s an exaggeration to say he’s the best young player of all time. Hands up, I didn’t see Pelé, who did score two goals in the World Cup final at 17. That’s a decent counter point. What was unusual about Ronaldo at that age is that he already seemed like the finished product as a teenager. He was set to dominate football for years. The gods of injury thought otherwise. Damn you!!!!

Up to the injury

He was 23 years and two months old when the injury came. He was 3 goals away from 200 in club football:

Even before the big injury, his body was starting to fail him — an injury-hit second season at PSV saw similar in Milan with Internazionale. Yet still, he had a 0.83 goals per game average. For his country, 36 goals were scored in 53 caps by the same date.

How does that compare to some other big name scorers at a similar age

Granted, goals before turning 23 isn’t a universally used metric but it does help make a good comparison point. Club and country — senior football only (so not including his Olympics tally). How does he compare.

The point here is that aside from some contentious Pelé stats, no player in this list of modern greats peaked before the age Ronaldo had his first serious injury. Some peaked soon after this — Cristiano Ronaldo, van Basten for example, some peaked later in their 30s (Benzema, Lewandowski, Kane). None peaked by 23. So it’s a fair assumption that Ronaldo Nazário would have improved. Interestingly, Haaland comes pretty close and we’re not yet sure of where his peak is. And he is purely goals, Ronaldo was much, much more than just goals.

When the others actually peaked

Strikers just don’t really peak young. The historical pattern, even for those with Championship Manager numbers (99–00 if you’re asking), is a first explosion in the early twenties and then a plateau that runs from about 24 to 30, sometimes longer. Here is when the names above did their actual damage.

Ronaldo’s best counted season is age 20. Everyone else on that list — with the possible exception of Haaland — did their serious scoring after the age Ronaldo’s tendon went. Messi’s 73-goal year is four years later in a career. Cristiano’s 61 is nine years later. Lewandowski’s 55 is eleven years later. Benzema waited until 34. Kane is still going at 32. The Brazilian had not reached the age band where centre-forwards historically mint their reputations. He had already been the best player in the world twice.

Van Basten is an interesting comparison — he had an incredible final season for Ajax (43 in 43) before moving to a notoriously defensive Serie A, where he still posted great numbers until his own horror injury. Marco got to 28, three Ballons d’Or, a European Cup, Euro 88 (that volley in the final), then the ankle went. Ronaldo did not get the 24–28 pre-injury. He got a World Cup as a different, heavier, still-brilliant player, and a Madrid spell that would be a fine career for anybody else (100+ goals).

Had he escaped injury

This is the fantasy part of the “what if” article, so allow your mind to escape the confines of fact for a short moment.

After the first rupture he played 327 more games and scored 181 more goals. That is 0.55 per game. Before it, 0.81. Same bloke, different knee. And in fact, it happened to him twice, but it was the first one that changed him.

If you were to take his 0.81 goals per game rate and applied it across his whole 616 game career, then you’re looking at just shy of 500 goals. It’s not a massive leap to suggest his rate would have improved above 0.81 for those prime striker years, then perhaps dropped towards the end.

By way of (another) comparison, Cristiano Ronaldo and Leo Messi are both closing in on 1,000 career goals. Their rate?

Messi has 957 goals in 1,231 games at the time of writing. That’s an incredible 0.78 goals per game.

Cristiano Ronaldo has 979 goals in 1,340 games at 0.73 goals per game.

Both insane numbers. And yet…..

If you take into account the appearances that did not happen, it changes again. From 1998–99 to 2001–02 he managed just 52 games — or an average of 13 a season. Call it 150 missing games for club and country. If we again assume the rate remained at 0.81, then you’re looking at 620 goals.

It doesn’t seem outrageous when you watched him pre-injury. If anything it seems a bit on the light side.

One of the most likeable things about Ronaldo was that he played with a smile on his face, he seemed fun, he was always at carnivals, he rarely trained properly, he just loved playing. I’m not suggesting he would have gone on to Messi/Cristiano Ronaldo levels of appearances, and perhaps that longevity is part of their greatness, but without injury, he would have been in with a better goals per game number.

Ah, but the Champions League

This is the one that gets wheeled out whenever someone puts him in a greatest-ever XI and some faceless poster gets annoyed (pot kettle black, I know). He had just 14 goals in 40 Champions League games. The closest he came to playing in the final was getting to the semis with Real Madrid, only to go out to Juventus. He did of course score in the semi that he played in.

But there are mitigating factors here.

Firstly, he only played 6 Champions League games before the injury. Back then, only 1–2 teams qualified from the strong leagues. Instead, he played in the Cup Winners’ Cup (winner in the final) for Barça, and the UEFA Cup (winner in the final) for Inter. The remaining 34 games were post injury. He still had highlights — a hat-trick at Old Trafford chief amongst them.

So.

Greatest of all time is a pub argument, and this site specialises in proving if someone is a big game player or not. And this is where he stands up. He scored in the latest round of every competition his team played in. He didn’t score in the Champions League final because his team didn’t reach it. Instead he scored in the semi final. And the other two European competition finals. And twice in the World Cup Final. And scored in two Copa América finals. In fact, the 1998 World Cup Final aside (and we all know the story there), he pretty much did it on the big stage every time. Even with the convulsion in 1998, he had still scored in the semi final.

In short, he had a big game mentality — even after the injuries.

And although this is predominantly a stats based site, by God did he pass the eye test. He was incredible. So the bloke that twice broke the world transfer record by 21, had three FIFA World Player of the Year awards, two World Cup medals and was rated by many as the best ever did pretty well without the What If. But he could have been out of sight.

Those that don’t rate him and talk him down, never saw him play free of injury. Otherwise they’d realise how ridiculous they sound.