One more number to chase
Nine hundred and seventy-nine goals. Cristiano Ronaldo has counted every one of them, and he wants more. Thursday night in Lisbon, he earns cap number 234 for Portugal against Wales, the opening match of a new Nations League campaign. He is 41 years old. He is still going.
He thought about walking away. After a rough World Cup this summer, with critics circling and his tournament form well below the standard he set for two decades, retirement crossed his mind. He talked it through with Portugal’s federation president and head coach. The answer came back the same as it always has: stay.
“I had a conversation with our president, with our coach. I still believe that I’m able to help the national team,” Ronaldo said this week. He added that he will step aside only once he feels he is “not doing anything” for the group anymore. By his own admission, that moment has not arrived.
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A number nobody else is close to
The new target is round and enormous: 1,000 goals, club and country combined. He already holds Portugal’s all-time scoring record by a distance no rival threatens, sitting on 146 international goals. Reaching four figures overall would be, in his words, the culmination of something, “a beautiful story,” and he wants it to happen in a Portugal shirt if it happens at all.
Former Wales international Craig Bellamy, who shared a Premier League era with him, put the achievement in context: “His name will go down in history for hundreds and hundreds of years. That’s the impact he’s had.”
What Thursday actually means
None of this makes Wales an afterthought. Portugal open their new Nations League campaign against a Welsh side likely to sit deep, defend in numbers and try to make Ronaldo work for every yard. He now plies his trade at Al Nassr in Saudi Arabia, far from Europe’s weekly spotlight, and international windows like this one have become where his biggest audiences watch him play. A goal on Thursday would not close the gap to 1,000. It would just be the next brick.
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