Ronaldo: Portugal won't adapt play to get CR7 record

11:41am on Tuesday 17th November 2020
By Martin Macdonald

Portugal head coach Fernando Santos insists his team will not alter how they play in forward areas to find Cristiano Ronaldo more frequently as the Juventus star aims to become the greatest goalscorer in international football history.

Ronaldo is currently on 102 international goals for Portugal, second on the all-time list of scorers for their respective countries, with Ali Daei of Iran currently top with 109 goals.

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It is likely that CR7 will surpass the record at some point as he still captains the national side and features in every game for club and country if he is fit.

Top 10 international scorers of all time

International football’s leading scorers

Rank	Name	Nation	Caps	Goals
1	Ali Daei	Iran	149	109
2	Cristiano Ronaldo	Portugal	168	102
3	Mokhtar Dahari	Malaysia	131	86
4	Ferenc Puscas	Hungary	85	84
5	Godfrey Chitalu	Zambia	111	79
6	Hussein Saeed	Iraq	137	78
7	Pele	Brazil	92	77
=8	Kunishige Kamamoto	Japan	76	75
=8	Bashar Abdullah	Kuwait	134	75
=10	Sunil Chhetri	India	115	72
=10	Majed Abdullah	Kuwait	117	72

Even though Portugal would naturally be delighted if Ronaldo achieved the feat, they won't sacrifice players in a better position to score just to set up the Juventus superstar.

"No, certainly not, nobody will be thinking about Cristiano," Santos said when asked if Portugal will go out of their way to help Ronaldo.

"They [other players] will not be thinking about not scoring in order to give the chance to someone else. Even Cristiano wouldn't want that to happen. Cristiano will score when he has to score. They [other players] will not be thinking about that."

Even at the age of 35, Ronaldo remains a goalscoring machine.

Since joining Juventus he scored 21 league goals in 30 starts in 2018/19, 31 goals in 33 starts in 2019/20, while so far in 2020/21 he has scored six goals in just three starts in Serie A.

He'll have the opportunity to get closer to Daei this midweek when Portugal take on Croatia in the Nations League.

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