How do you stop CR7?

scored 117 goals for Sir Alex Ferguson’s men before moving to the Bernabeu in 2009 for a record £80m fee.

He has since scored 185 times in 184 games for Real Madrid, including 30 in 35 Champions League games. So can anybody stop him? And, if so, how? Former Reading right-back Graeme Murty played against Ronaldo on four occasions between 2006 and 2008… and Ronaldo scored four times.
Now a coach at Southampton, Murty tells BBC Sport what he learned from marking the Portugal international.

Ronaldo was definitely the most difficult opponent I ever faced because of his all-round skill-set — he’s quick, strong, excellent with both feet and powerful in the air. He possesses such an array of threats that even if you manage to negate one, you leave yourself open to other avenues of attack.

Playing against him is an intimidating experience for any defender, because you know you’re coming up against the most gifted individual you’ll ever have to face in your entire career.

It’s not just his ability, because he’s also very intelligent. I think he “profiles” his opponents during the game better than anyone else in the world. By that I mean he’ll very quickly assess the defenders he’s up against, work out their strengths and weaknesses and how he can exploit them.

Some defenders like to adopt a physical approach against creative players – putting in a couple of strong early tackles to let him know you’re there. But that’s a very bad idea against Ronaldo!
Before my first game against Ronaldo, I spoke to Darren Fletcher at United, who was my team-mate with Scotland at the time. He just gave me one piece of advice: don’t kick him.

If you do that, you’ll make him angry and he’ll try to make you look as bad as possible for the rest of the game. He’ll react by tormenting you and making you wish you never had to play football again! I remember that game clearly. It was just after Reading had been promoted in 2006. United were the first big team we’d welcomed to the Madejski Stadium, so it was a massive occasion for the club.

We got a penalty through Kevin Doyle and were leading inside the last 20 minutes, but then Ronaldo got the ball on the left wing and started to run at me. It was the first time all game that I couldn’t quite get out to him quickly enough, and of course he ran past me and smashed it into the bottom corner for the equaliser. — BBC Sport.