Cristiano Ronaldo's Pursuit of 1,000 Goals: Can He Make It?
In the Saudi Pro League on Friday, Cristiano Ronaldo scored another goal to bring his career total to 911 as Al Nassr fell short against Nacho's Al Qadsiah, a former Real Madrid colleague.
Though he recently downplayed the possibility, saying he was "living at the moment" and "not thinking long term," there has been much discussion over whether the Portugal captain can reach 1,000 goals in senior professional soccer. However, he has already made it known that he wants to achieve 1,000 goals.
Working out doesn't need you to be a mathematician. Ronaldo is presently 89 goals short of that objective, which doesn't seem like much considering how frequently he scores goals. But should we anticipate that rate to hold true when the five-time Ballon d'Or winner turns 40 in February?
Ronaldo has scored 911 goals in 1,252 club and national team games since joining Sporting Lisbon in 2002, or around 0.73 goals per game. He would need to play 122 more games to reach the milestone if he were to score another 89 goals at that rate.
Another strategy is to focus just on his goal-scoring performance since joining Al Nassr, where he seems certain to remain until something extraordinary occurs. Ronaldo has scored 92 goals in 107 games since the start of 2023 (75 in 86 games for Al Nassr and 17 in 21 games for Portugal). He would only need to play 104 more games to reach 1,000 at that pace of 0.86 per game.
The figures needed are nearly the same as the ones he has reported since January 2023, using a slightly different but easier methodology. He might therefore reach four digits by the end of August 2026 if he keeps on his current pace, which would be one year and nine months after joining Al Nassr, when he scored 88 goals.
He would be well over his 42nd birthday at that point. However, because he has declared that he would never stop playing international soccer and is so close, it is undoubtedly a goal worth pursuing.
