Where Does Cristiano Ronaldo Rank Among the Pantheon of Football Greats?

When Cristiano Ronaldo ran through to score Portugal’s third against Sweden last week to secure a place in next year’s World Cup finals, behind him on the half-way line you could see Hugo Almeida already celebrating with both his arms in the air.

Such is Ronaldo's relentless brilliance that his team-mates knew what was about to happen, and he did not disappoint them by converting the chance.

Over the course of the two legs against Sweden, Ronaldo had scored all four of Portugal’s goals to take them to Brazil next summer.

The performance in Stockholm demonstrated such power and naked brilliance that it inevitably sparked the debate about who was the best player in the world at the moment.

The consensus seemed to be that Ronaldo had now overtaken the injured Lionel Messi and would be handed the FIFA Ballon d’Or for the first time since France Football’s Ballon d’Or and FIFA’s World Player of the Year merged three years ago.

At times it feels as though we should simply enjoy having two geniuses playing in the same era and resist the urge to constantly compare them.

A wider and bigger debate is: where Cristiano Ronaldo ranks in the Pantheon amongst football’s greatest ever players?

It is not too early to be debating this, for should his career end tomorrow, Ronaldo would still have done enough to be placed amongst football’s greatest ever players.

Ronaldo’s greatness is now beyond all debate. He possesses that very rare quality—the power to take control of games, to dictate events, and to shape games to his own desires.

It is just over 10 years since he arrived at Old Trafford as an expensive unknown to replace the Real Madrid bound David Beckham.

I was at Old Trafford to witness his early years in England, and you could immediately see he had that rare talent to ghost past defenders.

I was once even caught on television in a slow motion replay with my mouth wide open in amazement as he tricked his way past a series of Manchester City defenders in an FA Cup tie.

In those first three seasons at Old Trafford he was a work in progress, sometimes he could over elaborate and be too selfish, but he was simply learning how to exploit his incredible talent.

In the final three years it all came together and he became the Premier League’s most outstanding player, leading Manchester United to three consecutive titles and two Champions League finals, winning the first one against Chelsea in Moscow in 2008.

Between 2006 and 2009, Ronaldo scored 92 goals in 155 games for United. He was now almost unstoppable.

The move to Real Madrid had always been inevitable. Ronaldo had never hidden his desire to wear the white shirt and in the summer of 2009 he finally got his wish.

If Ronaldo had simply continued his United form in La Liga he would still be revered as a great, but he has managed to do something that seemed almost impossible, and become significantly better.

In just over four seasons, Ronaldo has scored 226 goals in 217 games for Real Madrid.

These are incredible statistics, because the benchmark for a great player was always scoring a goal every other game, and Ronaldo manages more than a goal a game. He has rewritten the rules.

This year alone he has scored 68 goals, more than the combined efforts of Manchester United, Manchester City and Chelsea.

A Ronaldo hat-trick for Real Madrid is no longer greeted with awe, but a mere shrug. Of course, it is Ronaldo. He has scored 22 so far.

After only just over four seasons, Ronaldo is already fifth on Real Madrid’s all-time leading goal scorer list.

While the personal records have stacked up, they have also come at an overall cost at Real Madrid as so far he has only won one La Liga title and is still waiting to play in a Champions League final.

However, Ronaldo deserves to strut in to the Pantheon of football’s greatest players and stand alongside fellow greats Zinedine Zidane, Alfredo Di Stefano, Johan Cruyff, George Best, Marco van Basten, Michel Platini, Franz Beckenbauer, Brazilian Ronaldo, Ferenc Puskas, Garrincha, Eusebio and La Liga contemporary Lionel Messi.

Ronaldo has earned the right to be spoken about with these names. It is not premature. It feels right to rank him alongside them.

At the moment, Ronaldo ranks alongside these players, but he is still behind Pele and Diego Maradona. 

Within the Pantheon is a roped-off area reserved for the two greatest footballers of all-time, and Ronaldo has not yet done enough to join them, but the advantage he has compared to the others, with the obvious exception of Messi, is that he is still playing.

If Ronaldo keeps scoring for Real Madrid at the same rate, and starts to help them win more La Liga titles and appear in more Champions League finals, he could elbow his way in.

There is also one obvious feat he can achieve to even further boost his ranking in the game’s history: win the World Cup next year.

With the increasing dominance of the Champions League it almost seems old fashioned to suggest a World Cup win is needed to enshrine greatness, but it remains the one obvious achievement Pele and Maradona have over him at the moment.

If Ronaldo can inspire an average Portugal to lift the World Cup next year, which would carry echoes of what Diego Maradona did with a similarly average Argentina side in 1986, the debate would be all over and he would join Maradona and Pele as the greatest footballers ever.