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Cristiano Ronaldo, fresh off his Ballon d'Or win, has had a rather difficult start to the 2017/18 season. Yet, it does not pay to write the Portuguese superstar off.
He always comes to life at the business end of the season, and Ronaldo could very well be on his way to ensure that his 2018 is trophy-laden as well.
Here are 6 records Cristiano Ronaldo can break in 2018:
#1 Go past Alfredo di Stefano's number of trophies with Real Madrid
Real Madrid are the most decorated club of all time - to be their most decorated player ever, would be Cristiano Ronaldo's crowning achievement. However, the Portuguese star is quite behind the all-time leader - Paco Gento.
Ronaldo has won 15 trophies with Real Madrid - 3 UEFA Champions Leagues, 3 UEFA Super Cups, 2 La Liga titles, 3 FIFA Club World Cups, 2 Copas del Rey and 2 Spanish Super Cups. Alfredo di Stefano is ahead of him with 17 titles, and if Madrid can lift the UEFA Champions League, the Super Cups and the Copa del Rey in 2018, Ronaldo will go past the legend.
Here is the list of the most-decorated Real Madrid players:
23 - Paco Gento
22 - Manolo Sanchis
19 - Iker Casilla, Chendo, Jose Camacho
18 - Fernando Hierro, Sergio Ramos, Marcelo
17 - Alfredo di Stefano
16 - Raul, Martín Vazquez, Michel, Emilio Butragueno, Santillana, and Miguel Angel
15 - Cristiano Ronaldo, Guti, Pirri
#2 Win the Golden Foot for the first time
It's not often that Cristiano Ronaldo misses out on winning an award, especially one that he has been nominated for three times. The award is given to a player above the age of 28, and can only be won once.
Ronaldo has more than 50 individual awards to his name - and given what we know of his personality, he will surely want to win this award as well.
Also Read: 7 players who deserve the Golden Foot award
Here is the list of past Golden Foot winners:
2003 Roberto Baggio
2004 Pavel Nedv?d
2005 Andriy Shevchenko
2006 Ronaldo Nazario
2007 Alessandro Del Piero
2008 Roberto Carlos
2009 Ronaldinho
2010 Francesco Totti
2011 Ryan Giggs
2012 Zlatan Ibrahimovi?
2013 Didier Drogba
2014 Andrés Iniesta
2015 Samuel Eto'o
2016 Gianluigi Buffon
2017 Iker Casillas
#3 The 300 Club
Well, it's not really a club.
Lionel Messi is the only player in footballing history who has more than 300 goals in La Liga, with a scarcely-believable 364 goals so far. However, the Argentine took 399 games to reach that tally - a ratio of 0.91
Cristiano Ronaldo, on the other hand, has a better goalscoring rate - his 289 goals have come in just 277 games - a ratio of 1.04 goals every game. At his average goal-scoring rate, we can expect Ronaldo to be celebrating his 300th La Liga goal in March.
As for 300 La Liga appearances, there are far more players in Spain to have achieved that feat (36). There are 22 games left in La Liga for Real Madrid this season, so if Ronaldo moves in the summer, he will never achieve that feat, although he will have gone past Alfredo di Stefano and Juanito in terms of appearances.
#4 Win the FIFA World Cup with Portugal
It's a fairly obvious one, but if Cristiano Ronaldo wins the 2018 FIFA World Cup in Russia with Portugal, he'll be the first ever reigning Ballon d'Or champion to do so. Plenty of players have won the Ballon d'Or as a result of winning the World Cup, but no player has ever arrived as the Ballon d'Or holder and won the World Cup.
The closest a footballer has come before was in 1994 and 1998, with Roberto Baggio and Ronaldo Nazario having won the Ballon d'Or in 1993 and 1997 respectively, but suffered heartbreaking defeats with Italy and Brazil in the final of the FIFA World Cup.
This is the one trophy that will cement Cristiano Ronaldo's status as the world's best, and we can be sure that he will be pulling all stops to ensure A Selecao win silverware yet again after their Euro 2016 triumph.
#5 The Fifth Champions League
Cristiano Ronaldo has won 3 UEFA Champions League titles with Real Madrid and 1 with Manchester United. He is level with Clarence Seedorf, Samuel Eto’o, Xavi, Gerard Piqué, Iniesta, and Lionel Messi in terms of the most number of UEFA Champions League trophies won.
No player has ever won the UEFA Champions League five times - in its modern format. In its previous avatar, the European Cup was won 6 times by the legendary Paco Gento, but there is an asterisk as the trophy was just a few games long in the 50s, when Gento racked up his first 5 titles.
Real Madrid's form in La Liga has been terrible, but their UEFA Champions League form has been relatively good. Cristiano Ronaldo loves the competition, and if he becomes the first ever player to win the modern format five times, Real Madrid will also create history by completing a Champions League hat-trick.
#6 The Sixth Ballon d'Or
Win the UEFA Champions League with Real Madrid; win the 2018 FIFA World Cup with Portugal, and a sixth Ballon d'Or is but a mere formality for Cristiano Ronaldo. Lionel Messi already individually outperformed Ronaldo in 2017, but the Portuguese star ran away with the award for inspiring Real Madrid to some silverware.
It's a long way from 2013, when Lionel Messi had 4 Ballon d'Or trophies to his name and Ronaldo only had one. It takes a special belief to take that situation to the 5-5 it is now.
The 6th Ballon d'Or will truly be a special one, if it happens. Cristiano Ronaldo, can perhaps finally end the debate, as no player has ever done it. For another year at least, he can claim to be officially better than Lionel Messi.
