Is Cristiano Ronaldo the greatest player to ever represent the club?
Cristiano Ronaldo is currently formally the best goalscorer ever. The Portuguese forward scored after simply 30 minutes against Levante on Saturday to surpass Raul’s record of 323 goals for Los Blancos. Yet, would he say he is the best player to ever represent the club?
Ronaldo, nonetheless, has won one and only Liga title and one Champions League crown in his six seasons so far at the Santiago Bernabeu. Altogether, the Portuguese has asserted seven titles in that time, yet while Messi has driven the Catalan club amid the best spell in their whole history, this is definitely not a brilliant period for Real Madrid. Cristiano was critical as Los Blancos proclaimed la Decima in 2013-14, scoring 17 times to set another Champions League goals record and completion the schedule year with four trophies as Real likewise included the Uefa Super Cup and the Fifa Club World Cup to the Copa del Rey they had won their European triumph.
In any case, Ronaldo’s arrival could not hope to compare close by the trophies guaranteed by players like Alfredo Di Stefano and Paco Gento in the 1950s and 1960s – a period when Madrid ruled football by winning the initial five European Cups. Di Stefano was viewed as the best player in that time and won 18 trophies altogether, including those five European Cups, eight Liga titles, a Copa del Rey and an Intercontinental Cup in a period when there were no Spanish Supercopas to knock up a flatware accumulation. Di Stefano passed on a year ago at 88 years old and Madrid paid tribute to their previous player, mentor and privileged president in a piece on their site entitled ‘Alfredo Di Stefano – the best player ever’.
“Di Stefano is the main player in history to have won the Super Ballon d’Or. He played 11 seasons with Real Madrid and was a key variable in the club’s global control.”
Madrid can’t emphasize “international control” in their present time, even after a year ago’s World Club Cup and Champions League crowns – especially as Barca (and Messi) have won 17 trophies to Real’s seven since Ronaldo moved to the Bernabeu in a €94 million (£80m) move in the late spring of 2009. Furthermore, even Raul, the club’s unequaled top scorer before Saturday, won 16 trophies for Real including three Champions Leagues and six Primera Division titles.
So Ronaldo is without a doubt the best goalscorer in Madrid’s history – there is little question about that. Be that as it may, would he say he is, similar to Messi at Barcelona, the finest footballer to ever speak to the club? Not yet. For all his brightness and his heavenly strike rate in the course of the most recent six years, the Portuguese needs a couple of more top trophies in a time of mastery locally and in Europe in the event that he to dislodge Di Stefano (and apparently others, as well) and be viewed as the club’s most noteworthy ever player. What’s more, at the time of very nearly 31, time is running out.