Cristiano Ronaldo birthday: Football legend Cristiano Ronaldo was born in Funchal in Portugal on February 5, 1985 and has become one of the all-time greats of the game.
The Portuguese footballer played a major role in the country winning the 2016 UEFA Euro Championships and 2019 Nations League titles.
He holds the record for most goals in the history of football, most goals in UEFA Champions League, most goals for Real Madrid and all-time highest goal-scorer for Portugal.
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Here are some of the interesting facts from the life and career of Ronaldo:
- Ronaldo was diagnosed with a racing heart as a teenager that could have ended his dreams of taking up football as a career. However, he underwent a surgery before resuming his training a few days later.
- Ronaldo represented amateur team Andorinha where his father was a kitman. He eventually was signed by Sporting CP before catching the eye of the legendary Sir Alex Ferguson of Manchester United.
- Before joining United, Ronaldo’s representatives explored the options with other clubs including Liverpool FC, Arsenal FC and FC Barcelona. Eventually, he joined United for a reported transfer fee of £12.24 million.
- Ronaldo quickly became a fan-favorite at Old Trafford impressing with his dribbling, speed and goal-scoring abilities. He won three Premier League titles and Champions League with the club before leaving for Real Madrid in 2009. In 2008, he won his first Ballon d’Or award.
- Ronaldo arrived at Real after breaking the transfer fee record (£80 million) with reportedly 80,000 fans attending his unveiling at Santiago Bernabéu. He went on to become their all-time leading goal-scorer and won two La Liga and four Champions League titles during his spell apart from several other competitions. Before he left Real, Ronaldo also won the Ballon d’Or award four more times.
- With 134 goals till date, Ronaldo has scored the most goals in UEFA Champions League history.
- He is one of the two footballers to have scored a goal in each minute of a game.
- With 102 goals for Portugal, he’s the second in the list of all-time leading goal-scorers at international level. Ali Daei of Iran currently leads the list with 109 goals.
- He has scored the most number of hat-tricks (9) at international level and became the oldest player (33 years and 130 days) to do so at a FIFA World Cup.
- Ronaldo has 259m followers on the popular photo sharing platform Instagram which is the most for any individual account.
