Celebrating the 39th birthday of modern soccer's greatest striker ever
Arguably the greatest striker in modern football, Brazil’s Ronaldo celebrates his 39th birthday on Tuesday, which provides a welcome excuse to look back at “Il Fenomeno” and watch low definition videos of the man that will forever serve as Brazil’s standard for the No. 9 shirt.
When he stepped away from the game in 2011, Ronaldo held the all-time World Cup goals record with 15 tallies. That record would be eclipsed by Germany’s Miroslav Klose in 2014, but even the most impassioned German fans would have an impossible time picking Klose over Ronaldo. Ronaldo had pace, power, skill and the ability to score like few others ever have. With all due respect to Klose, he never came close to Ronaldo’s levels of brilliance.
Winner of the FIFA World Player of the Year three times and the Ballon d’Or twice, Ronaldo shook up Europe with memorable seasons at PSV Eindhoven, FC Barcelona, Inter Milan and Real Madrid.
But it was at the 2002 World Cup where Ronaldo forever etched his name into football lore.
Ronaldo scored eight times to make Brazil world champions, including twice over Klose and Germany in the 2002 final that finished 2-0. The last person to score more than Ronaldo at a World Cup was Gerd Muller back in 1970 when he bagged 10 goals for West Germany.
Not intending to take away from legends like Muller and Eusebio, who scored nine goals at the 1966 World Cup, but modern football has come a long way over the past four decades. Over the first 10 World Cups, seven competitions featured players scoring eight or more goals with an eighth featuring a player scoring seven goals. In the 10 World Cups that have followed, only one phenomenon has trampled the competition with eight goals—Ronaldo—and no other player has bagged more than six goals. Klose never scored more than five in a single World Cup. Pele’s best total was six goals, which came in 1958.
Ronaldo’s pristine positioning, his pickup power and his samba smooth skills made him utterly unstoppable for a solid stretch of his consequential career. As great as he was for Barcelona, Inter Milan, Real Madrid and AC Milan for short spells, Ronaldo’s consistency with Brazil built his legacy. Two Copa Americas helped, but a crushing loss in the 1998 World Cup final that resulted in the storybook bounce back triumph in 2002 cemented Ronaldo in the pantheon of the sport.
On Tuesday, Ronaldo’s 39th birthday calls for a goal celebration or at least a bad haircut.
Shahan Ahmed is a soccer columnist for Yahoo Sports. Follow Shahan on Twitter: @ShahanLA and @perfectpass
