In playing at his fifth FIFA World Cup, he joined Lothar Matthaus, Antonio Carbajal, Rafa Marquez, Gianluigi Buffon, Andres Guardado, Guillermo Ochoa and Lionel Messi in achieving this distinction. Should CR7, as expected, play in all three of Portugal’s group-stage matches, he will enter the competition’s list of top-ten appearance holders.
But Ronaldo has never been interested in joining a club. He wants to strike out alone as, arguably, the game’s greatest of all time and, as such, 24 November 2022 will remain a momentous date for him.
It is the date on which he became the first and only man to score at five separate editions of the game’s greatest tournament, opening the scoring for Portugal in a thrilling 3-2 win over Ghana. As yet another record falls to the highest-scoring man in the history of international football, FIFA+ looks at his route to World Cup immortality.
