Cristiano Ronaldo is one heck of a footballer. Ever since he made his debut for Manchester United, the Portuguese has been gathering one accolade after another for both club and country.
Along with Leo Messi, he’s been a player who has broken the norm and risen above the level of the average footballer. Messi and Ronaldo have broken several records while on the path of their respective conquests.
Many of those records are well known and have been recognized as league or club records but some have also made the Guinness book of Wolrd records. So here are 5 of Ronaldo’s records that are a part of the Guinness recognition of his achievements
5) Most followers on Instagram for an athlete
Social Media is big among superstars and celebrities and that includes athletes and sports personalities as well. They even hire account managers who take care of updating their page and post the occasional photo.
Well, whoever is in charge of Ronaldo’s Instagram account is clearly doing a very good job right now. The Portuguese superstar is in the book for the most number of followers for an athlete or sportsperson.
According to the website, as of 23rd august 2016, he has 74,069,275 fans on his account. He is the 7th most followed person on the social media site which is quite a record to have. Neymar and Messi are behind him but by quite some distance.
Neymar has 57,651,689 followers while Leo Messi is third with 51,729,138.
4) Most goals in a single season of a European club competition
This one is more up Ronaldo’s alley. The Real Madrid man is particularly good at one thing more than anything else and that is scoring goals. But he shares this record with another forward who knew how to score but might have forgotten that skill as of now.
During the 2013/14 season, Ronaldo led Real Madrid to La Decima, their 10th UEFA Champions League trophy. He managed to net 17 goals in the competition alone, a number matched only by Radamel Falcao who got the same number of goals for Porto in the 2010/11 Europa league campaign
That year he managed 51 goals in all competitions. He once again came close to matching his own record last year in the Champions league when he netted 16 times en route to Los Blancos 11th European title.
So the key to winning Champions League for Real Madrid, make sure Ronaldo scores tons of goals.
3) Most Euros scored in by a player
Leo Messi and Cristiano Ronaldo are no doubt, two great players but in the past both were criticized for one thing, not winning a trophy with their respective national teams. But Ronaldo can finally cross that off his list after he lifted the Euro 2016 trophy alongside his teammates this summer.
Leo Messi sadly did not have the same luck after his third consecutive defeat in a major tournament final with Argentina. Ronaldo has now managed to score in all of the four European championships he has played in which incidentally is a record.
He scored two goals in Euro 2004, once in Euro 2008, three times in Euro 2012 in which he was the joint top scorer and of course in Euro 2016 as well, the tournament in which he helped his team win the coveted trophy.
This is one record that might take a long time to break given how difficult it is to play in four consecutive Euros, not to mention having to make your national team as a teenager. Maybe Renato Sanches could be the next to break his countryman’s record.
2) Most ‘Liked’ person on Facebook
Here’s another social media record held by Cristiano Ronaldo, this time on the most popular social media platform in the world currently. The Portuguese currently has the most number of likes for any person on Facebook.
Why is this record so special? Well for starters the word ‘person’ is key. His personality spread is so vast even iconic pop stars and Hollywood actors can't match the number of followers he has garnered over the years.
He also beat fellow footballing rival Leo Messi in this category as well. Ronaldo has 117,052,223 likes on Facebook, while Messi has 86,968,478, which is around 30,000,000 less than the Madrid superstar.
The personality with the second highest number of likes is Colombian pop star Shakira with 104,622,942 followed by Hollywood actor Vin Diesel at 100,200,337. It’s not who you would expect to be on this type of list but then again many still haven‘t figured out the dynamics of social media
1) Highest annual earnings for a footballer
When you become a highly successful athlete with millions of followers around the world you are bound to be one of the most sought after by brands to endorse products. A player like Cristiano Ronaldo who is probably the most marketable sports personality currently is bound to earn a lot from endorsements.
He is paid a whopping 32 million Euros by Real Madrid alone. He represents one of the biggest sportswear brands in the world in Nike. He is also endorsed by Coca-Cola, Tech giants Samsung among others.
All these endorsements and several other sources we probably don’t even know off sum up to a grand earnings total of $80 million. To throw some perspective of where that figure stands it easily beats the highest earning actor Dwayne Johnson’ by a good $27 million or so.
In fact this year according to the latest Forbes list, he tops the highest earning athletes list.
