32 Greatest footballers in the history of the English Premier League - Part 25
13. Cristiano Ronaldo:
Cristiano Ronaldo is a professional footballer who is currently playing for the Spanish team Real Madrid. The 25-year old is also a part of the Portuguese national team and wears the captain’s arm band for them.
Cristiano Ronaldo is a winger and can perform on the right or the left flank. He is considered as one of the best players in the world and that explains the “buyout” clause that his team has given to him which is of 1 million Euros.
Ronaldo started playing football when he was only 8 years old and joined the Portuguese club Andorinha. After being a part of the youth academy of the Portuguese side, he joined another youth academy in Portugal and they were known as Nacional. After two
years, a top club in Portugal Sporting CP saw the talented boy and bagged him for training him in their youth academy.
Cristiano Ronaldo started to play for the Portuguese club as a reserve player and soon managed to make it to the first team. In 2001 he was called up in the first team but only warmed the bench throughout the first year and soon he managed to show the “talent”
he possessed and was treated as a regular.
After being a part of the Portuguese side, the English club Manchester United bagged the Portuguese star after they saw the talent he had.
Sir Alex Ferguson was in charge of Manchester United when Cristiano Ronaldo joined the Red Devils and the era of “CR 7” began. Ronaldo became a deadly asset for the English club and started to perform extraordinarily well for them after winning the “best
young player of the year” award during the first year that he performed for Manchester United.
The next season, the change in Ronaldo was immense. He started to dribble the ball with much more ease and with the help of his pace and the “shooting” power that he had, he managed to score a lot of goals for his team and helped them win the English Premier
League.
After a few years with the English club, Ronaldo helped them win the UEFA Champions League and also helped the club to win the English Premier League. After bagging so much gold for the club, he also won the FIFA World Player of the Year award while the
Barcelona starlet Lionel Messi and the AC Milan star Kaka, both were left behind.
He scored 118 goals for the English club in only 292 appearances and then followed his dream of joining the Spanish giants Real Madrid; the club where the most glorious players have played. He was given an offer that no player would refuse. His transfer
fees was approximately 80 million pounds and the deal was agreed that he will be paid 11 million Euros per year, which makes him the highest paid player in the world at the moment.
Even though Ronaldo was such a success at club level and despite his 33 goal run in only 35 matches during the Spanish La Liga, he did not manage to be a success for the Portuguese side.
Maybe it was the pressure on him because of the “captain’s armband” that he was wearing. He just simply didn’t perform for them and only managed to score a single goal during the FIFA World Cup 2010. He only managed to touch the ball 7 times throughout the
match against the Spanish side and Ronaldo was simply silent while the Spaniards were busy demolishing the Portuguese defences.
Ronaldo is a legend of this century and he is definitely going to be remembered because of his flawless dribbling and dead ball techniques. The former player of the year is currently playing for the Spanish side Real Madrid and he is definitely going to
do wonders for them especially after the Portuguese coach Jose Mourinho is in charge of the club.
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