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MUNICH. — Cristiano Ronaldo’s brace to beat Lionel Messi to 100 goals in European football came against a “wall” in Bayern Munich keeper Manuel Neuer, says Zinedine Zidane.
The Portuguese superstar scored his 99th and 100th goals in Real Madrid’s comeback Champions League quarter-final first-leg 2-1 win over the German champions on Wednesday night.
In fact, Ronaldo became the first player to reach a European century after his brace in Munich helped put Real Madrid on course for a place in the last four of the Champions League.
The 99th and 100th goals of his European career came 4 264 days after his first, which arrived for Manchester United in a 3-0 qualifying round victory over Debrecen in 2005.
What has followed has been one of the great careers in European football, which has yielded a century of goals in just 140 games and has seen him lift the Champions League trophy on three occasions.
Perhaps surprisingly, just 16 of his European goals came for Manchester United prior to his move to Madrid in 2009, with the Portuguese failing to score in his first 13 Champions League games for the Red Devils before finally netting against Debrecen.
It then took another two years for his next, which came as he scored twice in a 7-1 group stage victory over Roma in 2007, but from that point on he has been almost unstoppable.
Thirteen more goals followed for Manchester United before his big-money move to Madrid, including against Chelsea in the 2008 final in Moscow, with 41 goals so far coming at the Santiago Bernabeu during eight stunning years.
The goals have been shared around, too, with Ronaldo finding the net in 24 European cities across 15 countries. Aside from his homes in Manchester and Madrid, the 32-year-old has shown a liking for both Amsterdam and Istanbul, having scored there on five occasions against Ajax and Galatasaray respectively.
Of his hundred, 49 have come in home games, 47 on the road and four at neutral venues. The majority of his strikes have come with his right foot, with 83 coming inside the box and 12 directly from free-kicks.
More than half of his strikes have come in the opening 45 minutes of games, with his one and only extra-time goal helping Real clinch the trophy against city rivals Atletico Madrid in 2014.
His favourite opposition are German clubs as a fifth of his goals have come against Bundesliga sides, with Schalke his most-favoured opposition there thanks to the seven goals he has plundered against the Gelsenkirchen-based club. He’s managed the same number against Ajax.
Italian opponents have yielded 13 goals, but just four have come away from home thanks to two each against both Roma and Juventus.
While he failed to find the net on his one and only European appearance for first club Sporting Lisbon, in a qualifier against Inter Milan in August 2002, he has found the net in his adopted home city twice.
The first came on a visit to Sporting with Manchester United in 2007, which was just his fourth European goal, with his second arriving in the 2014 final when he struck against Atletico Madrid in Benfica’s Estadio da Luz.
Other notable goals include braces in the 2012 and 2014 semi-finals against Bayern, before another pair arrived in the 2014 Super Cup against Sevilla in Cardiff.
He also scored in both legs of Real’s clash with former club Manchester United in 2013, with his strike at Old Trafford taking his Manchester tally to nine. — The Mirror.
Online Reporter