Happy Birthday, Cristiano Ronaldo! His greatest ever goals

7:00am on Friday 5th February 2021
By Martin Macdonald

Cristiano Ronaldo turned the ripe old age of 36 on Friday but is still flying high at the top level of world football with Juventus in Serie A.

While it's not always easy to predict how football matches might turn out, Ronaldo's longevity has rarely been in doubt, continuing to score goals season after season.

The Portuguese superstar has once again proved to be a talismanic figure for the Bianconeri, and even though they have struggled in the league compared to recent seasons, he has still scored 22 goals in 20 starts for the Italian side in 2020/21.

Ronaldo has been playing senior football for 19 years, and recently became the sport's greatest ever goalscorer by netting his 760th career goal which, depending on who you ask, beat the record set by Austrian-Czech striker Josef Bican.

His goals have not just been scored in impressive quantity, the quality of them has also been incredible.

But which is the best?

FC's GREAT GOALS PROJECT

Ronaldo has scored an abundance of goals, and a huge selection of great ones. But what is a great goal? How do you categorise it?

Click HERE for Cristiano Ronaldo's 50 Greatest Goals Ever

The Great Goals Project is our attempt to catalogue, analyse, and rank every high-quality goal scored in various competitions or by famous players. We rank goals based across a number of specific categories in order to establish the difference between the very good, the great, and the greatest.

We have watched every goal ever scored by Cristiano Ronaldo and attempted to rank them, using a number of key factors.

By clicking through to each goal's individual page, not only can you watch a video of said goal, but you can see in more detail how we calculated each rating.

We categorise goals based on a number of factors which determine which goals we deem to be the best.

1. Aesthetically Pleasing: How enjoyable was the goal to watch?

2. Technical Difficulty: How hard is it for a professional player to score a goal like this?

3. Uniqueness: Has this goal been seen many times before, or is it one-of-a-kind?

4. Importance: Was the effort the fifth in a 5-0 win, or the winner in the Champions League final?

5. Standard of Opposition: How good was the team that the goal was scored against?

So enjoy a run through Ronaldo's greatest moments and feel free to let us know on Twitter what you think of our selections, at @CriticFootball_

Click HERE for Cristiano Ronaldo's 50 Greatest Goals Ever

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