Europe’s record man 85 goals in 152 matches
● Luis Suarez scores winner in 100th appearance for Uruguay ● Mighty Spain squeeze past Iran with Diego Costa’s third goal of the tournament
Cristiano Ronaldo's teams win trophies, but he takes home quite a bit of hardware himself.
Yesterday, the five-time FIFA player of the year added another personal milestone: In scoring the only goal in Portugal's match against Morocco at the World Cup, Ronaldo became Europe's all-time leading international scorer with 85 goals, overtaking Hungarian great Ferenc Puskas — a star at Real Madrid, just like Ronaldo.
At 33 years old, he's probably running out of time to catch the world's all-time leading scorer, Iran's Ali Dael, who scored a mammoth 109 goals in 149 international appearances.
Still, being the most prolific in European history puts him above some elite company.
As an 18-year-old, Ronaldo won his first international - Cristiano Ronaldo (Portugal) 3 Goals - Denis Cheryshev (Russia), Diego Costa (Spain)
2 Goals - Artem Dzyuba (Russia), Harry Kane (England), Romelu Lukaku (Belgium) cap against Kazakhstan in August 2003, when he came on as substitute for the great Luis Figo.
Ronaldo was part of the national squad in the 2004 European Championship held in Portugal. In a group game against Greece, Ronaldo scored his first international goal, but his team went down 2-1. Portugal would lose to Greece again in the final by 1-0.
Portugal was lucky to have Ronaldo break through into the national side at that time as the Figo-led "golden generation" would soon all retire.
He was some replacement. Ronaldo has scored five hat tricks, including in last Saturday's World Cup opener against Spain when the Iberian neighbors drew 3-3.
He has also netted four times in one match.
He has been a goal machine.
1 Goal - Aleksandr Golovin (Russia), Yuri Gazinskiy (Russia), Hirving Lozano (Mexico), Antoine Griezmann (France), Dries Mertens (Belgium), Alfred Finnbogason (Iceland), Sergio Aguero (Argentina), Philippe Coutinho (Brazil), Nacho (Spain), Jose Gimenez (Uruguay), Luis Suarez (Uruguay), Andreas Granqvist (Sweden), Mile Jedinak (Australia), Aleksandar Kolarov (Serbia), Luka Modric (Croatia), Yussuf Poulsen (Denmark), Ferjani Sassi (Tunisia), Steven Zuber (Switzerland), Juan Quintero (Colombia), Shinji Kagawa (Japan), M'Baye Niang (Senegal), Yuya Osako (Japan), Grzegorz Krychowiak (Poland), Mohamed Salah (Egypt) GROUP C GROUP C GROUP D