Diogo Jota will have to wait. Just for a moment in Luxembourg on Sunday evening, he thought he had scored his first goal for Portugal, but, with his mis-hit shot appearing to travel in slow motion, along came Cristiano Ronaldo to take it off him, knocking the ball home from a matter of centimetres.

It takes a particular type of character to steal the glory from a 22-year-old making only his second international appearance. Selfish? Well, few would dispute that Ronaldo’s extraordinary career has been fuelled by a certain sense of ego, but that is not the point here. What sets Ronaldo apart is just how insatiable, just how relentless he is in pursuit of immortality on the sporting stage.

Did you ever see a player happier to score an 86th-minute tap-in against Luxembourg? The goal rounded off a 2-0 win which secured Portugal’s place at Euro 2020, but, beyond that, it was Ronaldo’s 99th for his country. It leaves him just one short of the century and 10 goals behind the all-time international scoring record, held by Ali Daei, whose place in history, having 109 goals for Iran between 1993 and 2006, is suddenly under threat.

Suddenly? Well, yes, because this time four years ago Ronaldo had scored “just” 55 goals in 122 appearances for Portugal. Fifty-five international goals is a lot, more than any Englishman has ever managed, but it was only as many Jan Koller scored in 10 years playing for the Czech Republic. It took Ronaldo 12 years to reach that total. It has taken him just four years, or 43 appearances, to get from 55 goals to 99.

Those numbers are all the more staggering when you consider that, for long periods of his international career, Ronaldo had the look of a man weighed down by the burden of impossible expectations. Euro 2004: two goals. World Cup 2006: one goal. Euro 2008: one goal. World Cup 2010: one goal. Euro 2012: three goals. World Cup 2014: one goal. For several of those tournaments, the over-riding memory of Ronaldo is not of him scoring spectacular goals or baring his torso in celebration. It is of the pained expressions on his face as one long-range effort after another fizzed off target.

That sense of anguish was more visible than ever during the early matches of Euro 2016. The frustrations of his international career seemed to be summed up by the week in which he equalled and then broke Luis Figo’s record to become Portugal’s most capped player of all time. Over the course of frustrating draws with Iceland and Austria, he had no fewer than 20 shots without scoring and, for all his very justifiable self-belief, there were times when you could almost see the confidence draining from him, just like you could at the 2014 World Cup.

Portugal’s final group game at Euro 2016, against Hungary, was in danger of following a similar pattern. But at 2-1 down, Ronaldo produced a sublime flick from Joao Mario’s cross to equalise. At 3-2 down he met Ricardo Quaresma’s cross with a bullet header. And perhaps it says something about the pressure he had been under, lining up shots from long distance, that both of those goals against Hungary were instinctive, first-time finishes, as indeed was the header that put Portugal on course for victory over Wales in the semi-final.

Euro 2016 appears to have gone down in history as the tournament that cemented Ronaldo’s greatness, inspiring his country to glory on the international stage. But that narrative has always felt a little … forced, perhaps. He delivered big moments against Hungary and Wales, but it was pushing it to suggest that this was a tournament won by individual inspiration. Dogged resilience was the defining characteristic of Portugal’s campaign, particularly in the final, in which Ronaldo lasted just 25 minutes before being forced off with a knee injury.

Looking back now, though, it appears that one unforeseen consequence of Portugal’s Euro 2016 triumph was to lift the burden that Ronaldo had been carrying for so long. He began to look more relaxed, more at ease with himself, and the international duty ceased to appear so onerous to him. The humdrum routine of the European qualifying programme could now be seen in a different light: as an opportunity for a world-class player to rack up an absurd number of goals.

Ronaldo sat out Portugal’s first six games after last year’s World Cup, leading to speculation in some quarters that he had retired from international football, but he has since returned with a vengeance, not just playing in each of their last ten matches but playing for 703 of the past 720 minutes of action. He said on Sunday that he has been carrying an injury in recent weeks, hence being substituted by Juventus early in the second half against AC Milan, but he was still desperate to play 90 minutes against Luxembourg, even on what he described as a “potato field”. “When it’s needed to sacrifice myself for my club and the national team, I do so full of pride,” he said afterwards.

Ronaldo’s post-Euro 2016 haul in full: four goals against Andorra, one against the Faroe Islands, two against Latvia, two against Hungary, one against Sweden, two more against Latvia, one against Russia, one against New Zealand, another three against the Faroe Islands, another one against Andorra, two against Egypt, three against Spain, one against Morocco, three against Switzerland, one against Serbia, four against Lithuania, one against Luxembourg, one against Ukraine, another three against Lithuania and, on Sunday, another one against Luxembourg.

That hat-trick against Spain on the second day of last year’s World Cup was unforgettable. What stood out was the way that Ronaldo kept rising to the occasion, bending the game to his will, something that had seemed so difficult for him to achieve in previous tournaments. An abiding memory of that sweltering evening in Sochi was of the way he seemed to be smiling every time his face appeared on the big screen. (The excited shrieks of the locals were a giveaway.) The contrast with previous tournaments – and indeed with the pained body language of his great rival Lionel Messi, struggling to carry Argentina’s hopes on his shoulders – was impossible to ignore.

For the most apart, though, Ronaldo’s journey on the international stage since Euro 2016, taking him beyond Gerd Muller, Pele and Ferenc Puskas in the all-time goalscoring charts, has not required him to scale such heights. Luxembourg, Faroe Islands, New Zealand, Lithuania, Andorra and Latvia are, respectively, 96th, 110th, 121st, 132nd, 136th and 143rd in the FIFA rankings. Racking up 23 goals against that lot has been an exercise in flat-track bullying.

That, after all, is the reality of most of the international football calendar. Harry Kane has scored 12 goals in the Euro 2020 qualifying campaign, including hat-tricks against Bulgaria and Montenegro. Eran Zahavi’s 11 goals for Israel so far in this campaign include hat-tricks against Latvia and Austria. Aleksandar Mitrovic and Teemu Pukki have 10 apiece for Serbia and Finland respectively, and Artem Dzyuba has scored nine for Russia. As if to underline the point, Italy rounded off their qualifying campaign last night by beating Armenia 9-1, their tenth win in as many matches and their biggest since 1948.

It has taken Kane just two-and-a-half years to go from being a relatively slow starter at international level (five goals in his first 18 appearances) to being bang on course to break Wayne Rooney’s England record of 53. Kane’s haul of 32 goals for England includes 27 in his past 27 outings. Romelu Lukaku has scored 52 goals for Belgium by the age of 26.

International football is a strange beast. A large number of games feel like humdrum, pressure-free affairs, in which one team is preoccupied by thoughts of damage-limitation. Then, at tournament time, the stakes are raised much, much higher and the environment becomes unbearably intense for those players carrying their nation’s hopes and expectations, which is all the more difficult when they are exhausted at the end of a long, gruelling, all-consuming season at club level. It is why, on the World Cup stage, we have only seen fleeting glimpses of Ronaldo’s and Messi’s true brilliance.

Of Ronaldo’s 99 international goals, only seven have come in his four World Cups – and none in the knock-out stages. He has fared better in his four European Championships, scoring nine times, but only three of those goals (against Holland, the Czech Republic and Wales) have come in the knock-out stages. Eight nations (Brazil, Italy, Germany, Uruguay, England, Argentina, France and Spain) have won the World Cup. In 24 matches against those eight heavyweight nations, Ronaldo has scored a grand total of four goals (those three against Spain at the last World Cup, plus one in a friendly against Argentina in 2011).

None of this is intended to sound iconoclastic; Ronaldo is a phenomenon whose claims to greatness have long been utterly irrefutable. It is more a case of questioning whether the number of goals he has accumulated against Lithuania, Andorra, Latvia and Faroe Islands et al is even worth considering when it comes to trying to evaluate the precise degree of that greatness.

Does it shift the needle in the perennial Ronaldo vs Messi debate? Messi, after all, has “only” scored 70 international goals. But that argument is skewed by the relative difficulty of CONMEBOL qualifying competition, where the closest thing to a straightforward game would be against Bolivia (current Fifa ranking 75). Then again, Messi’s total includes hat-tricks in friendly games against Guatemala and Haiti. Not that there are any easy games in international football these days, of course. No, no, not at all.

If there is one thing that sets Ronaldo’s international career apart over the past few years it is the freedom he has begun to exude in the three years since his Portugal team, in a somewhat unconvincing, unexpected way, conquered Europe. The strains and pressures of carrying his nation have appeared to give way to a newfound freedom. The goals have always flowed for him on the international stage, but never before like this.

Even in Luxembourg on Sunday evening, there was no escaping the eternal question. “Messi, Messi, Messi,” the home crowd chanted gleefully as Ronaldo shanked a long-range effort high and wide in the first half.

As so often, though, he had the last laugh, barely able to contain his amusement after prodding Jota’s shot over the line in much the same way that Aaron Ramsey stole a goal from Ronaldo when Juventus faced Lokomotiv Moscow in the Champions League earlier this month – and Ronaldo probably still hasn’t forgiven Nani for bundling the ball over the line from an offside position in a friendly against Spain in 2010, denying Ronaldo what would have been one of the most gorgeous, most satisfying goals of his international career.

That clip is worth a look: not just for the comedy value in Ronaldo’s furious response towards a sheepish Nani but for the speed, elegance, ingenuity and audacity that encapsulated Ronaldo at his most formidable.



It is a beguiling clip, one that sums up, quite perfectly, the brilliance and the individual streak that makes him one of the greatest players of all time. Ninety-nine international goals? An incredible feat, but one which, above all, reflects his longevity and his relentless nature rather than, perhaps, the elite performance level that has underpinned his enduring excellence week after week, year after year on club football’s biggest stages.

How reassuring it was to hear Ed Woodward telling Manchester United’s investors on the New York Stock Exchange that the club have a “clear vision in terms of football philosophy and recruitment”.

This has been an increasingly familiar line out of Old Trafford over recent months, even with reference to a summer in which they reinforced their defence to the tune of £130 million but left their midfield and attacking options looking even thinner than last season. All the talk is of serious investments to be made over the next few transfer windows. But, given the extent of the rebuilding job that has been resisted for so long, why were they content to make just three signings (Harry Maguire, Aaron Wan-Bissaka and Daniel James) this summer?

United went into this season with four senior central midfielders (Paul Pogba, Nemanja Matic, Scott McTominay and Fred), four attacking midfielders or wingers (Andreas Pereira, Jesse Lingard, Juan Mata and James) and two centre-forwards (Marcus Rashford and Anthony Martial) plus various youngsters such as Angel Gomes and Mason Greenwood. In terms of both quality and quantity, it looked insufficient for a club of United’s size and presumed ambition.

Woodward says that “the ultimate goal is to win trophies, playing fast, fluid, attacking football with a team that fuses graduates from our academy along with world-class acquisitions”. Great, but that’s what everyone else wants too. Did it really take six years to come up with that?

Where is the world-class talent in this team, though? Where is the fast, fluid, attacking football? There has been the odd, fleeting glimpse of it this season, but even after a run of five wins in six matches in all competitions, even with a much more settled, more collegiate mood behind the scenes since Ole Gunnar Solskjaer took over from Jose Mourinho, United still look like a club and a team waiting for inspiration to take hold from somewhere. All this self-congratulatory talk of vision and philosophy appears premature.

A little bit late with this, perhaps, but, following the national team’s 1,000th match last week, here is my ultimate England XI, based on performance on the international stage during my lifetime (which means no Gordon Banks, Bobby Moore, Bobby Charlton, Jimmy Greaves etc): Peter Shilton – Rio Ferdinand, John Terry, Sol Campbell – David Beckham, Paul Gascoigne, Bryan Robson, Ashley Cole – Wayne Rooney – Gary Lineker, Michael Owen.

Three at the back? It makes perfect sense, given that all England’s best tournament performances of my lifetime (1990, 1996, 2018) have been achieved with that system. The selection of Ferdinand, Terry, Campbell and Cole underlines just how strong England were defensively through the 2000s, not least at tournaments. Cole edges out Kenny Sansom and Stuart Pearce on the left-hand side.

I’ve never truly embraced the Beckham hype, but his international career was excellent. Robson and Gascoigne trump Glenn Hoddle, Steven Gerrard, Paul Scholes, Frank Lampard et al when it comes to England. Rooney’s international career left a few frustrations, but the combination of spectacular highs (Euro 2004) and longevity gets him the nod over Peter Beardsley. Lineker? Obvious. And while picking Owen is not going to be a popular choice, particularly since it is at Alan Shearer’s expense, it does feel as if a lot of people have forgotten just how good he was for club and country before injuries took their toll.

(Photo: TF-Images/Getty Images)