Osamagbe Imadiyi
Cristiano Ronaldo celebrated his 40th birthday, a significant milestone that few football players achieve while still competing at the highest level. For the Al-Nassr star, however, age is merely a number, and the goal is still to continue demonstrating that boundaries are meant to be crossed.
A number of football legends, like Cristiano Ronaldo, have played past the age of forty. Paolo Maldini and Ryan Giggs flourished at 40, while Gianluigi Buffon retired at 45. Pelé continued to play until 42, and Zlatan Ibrahimović gave AC Milan the lead at 41. Elite football has no age restrictions, as these legends demonstrated, and Ronaldo will soon follow in their footsteps.
With over 900 official senior career goals for club and country, CR7, as he is affectionately known, is the greatest goalscorer of all time and one of the few players to have made over 1,200 professional career appearances, the most of any outfield player.
Ronaldo’s confidence has always been strong, and his most recent statement on Spanish TV on Monday only strengthened it. “I believe that I am the most complete player that has ever existed,” he commented.
“I respect and understand that you may prefer Messi, Pele, or Maradona, but is not it complete to say that Ronaldo is not to your taste? I say this with sincerity: I have not seen anyone better than myself.
Ronaldo has redefined longevity, going from a young player who once thought he would retire at 30, to a footballing phenomenon who outscored himself in his 30s (460 goals compared to 440 in his 20s).
According to BBC Sports on Wednesday, Costinha, a former teammate from Portugal, remembers having a completely different goal than the young player who made his debut for his country in 2003. “He said, ‘Costa, I am going to play until I am thirty years old, and then I will do something else.'” Ronaldo is still rewriting history twenty years later.
