The Centesimal Kick

Cristiano Ronaldo has been the idol of every football fanatic ever since the golden era of his career started back in the early 2000s. Often, he is ranked as the best player in the world and is widely regarded as the greatest. He keeps winning a number of accolades. During its 100^th anniversary, the Portuguese Football Federation gave him the title of the best Portuguese football player of all time. He is one of the most remarkable athletes in sports and is the only one to win 4 European Golden Shoe awards. In 2016, Forbes Magazine named him as the highest paid athlete in the world and in the same year, ESPN named him the world’s most famous athlete.

Ronaldo has been in the news yet again for becoming the first player ever to score 100 goals in the Champions League. He achieved this feat after bagging a match winning hattrick against Bayern Munich during the first leg on Tuesday, 18^th April 2017.

UEFA even tracked down the history of his 100 goals. As per UEFA, he scored 15 of them for Manchester United and 85 for Real Madrid. 77 of them were open play kicks, 12 were free kicks and lastly, 11 were penalties. 45 of them were scored during the first half, 52 during the second half and 3 during extra time. While 47 of these goals were scored away from home, he scored 51 goals in his home land and 2 at a neutral venue.

Following the etiquettes, once he achieved the remarkable feat, he asked his fans who were cheering his name to keep it low. “I don’t tell them to be quiet, never, I only ask that they do not whistle,” hetold Spanish TV station Antenna 3 when asked for the reason. “Because I always give my best in every game, although sometimes I do not score goals, I try and work hard to help Real Madrid”, he added.

On being asked about what he felt after his achievement, he said “I am sticking to positive things. The team has been fine, we played well and obviously, I am happy for the goals.”

Already having millions of die hard fans, we can only predict the number of football wonders Ronaldo would pull off in his career during his many upcoming matches. As rightly said, once a legend, always a legend.