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This week marks Cristiano Ronaldo’s 35th birthday, and the great Portuguese forward shows no sign of slowing down when it comes to goalscoring; 2020 is just a handful of weeks old and yet CR7 has already struck 9 goals for Juventus in just 5 games, averaging a goal every 50 minutes.
Could 2020 turn out to be one of Ronaldo’s most fruitful years to date? Perhaps – only time will tell – but if it is to be, he’ll have to continue his current red-hot form and not really slow down, as his best years saw him score an insane amount of goals.
Here are Cristiano Ronaldo’s highest-scoring calendar years to date.
#5: 2011 – 48 goals in 44 games
2011 saw Ronaldo turn 26 years old, and during that year, he was in the midst of two of his earlier seasons at Real Madrid. The Portuguese opened his account with a brace against Getafe on the 3rd day of 2011, and didn’t slow down from there. By the end of March, he’d already scored 10 league goals, including a pair of hat-tricks.
Two more hat-tricks in the league followed before the end of the 2010-11 season, as well as 5 goals in other competitions, giving Ronaldo a total of 28 in the calendar year before the start of 2011-12. The Portuguese then scored in Real’s second game of that season – in the Supercopa de Espana - and went onto score a hat-trick in the very first league game.
The goals continued to flow – including 3 in the Champions League’s group stage – and Ronaldo finished the calendar year with a total of 48 goals in 44 games, giving him an average of a goal every 77 minutes.
#4 2014 – 51 goals in 40 games
2014 was undoubtedly one of Ronaldo’s most productive years; 2013-14 saw him score 51 goals in all competitions while 2014-15 saw him score 61, a personal best for the Portuguese forward. 51 of those 112 goals came in the calendar year 2014, the same year that saw him help Real Madrid to capture the UEFA Champions League for the 10th time, and the same year that saw him awarded the Ballon d’Or.
CR7 was in terrifying form for the majority of the year, opening it with a brace against Celta Vigo and going on to score in 11 of Los Blancos’ 21 league games in the latter half of 2013-14. And of course, it was the Portuguese’s 8 goals in the knockout stages of the Champions League that cemented La Decima.
The first half of 2014-15 saw him in equally scintillating form; his brace won Real Madrid the UEFA Super Cup in the first game of the season, and before the calendar year had ended, he’d hit 25 goals in La Liga. Overall 2014 saw him scoring an average of a goal every 68 minutes – a ridiculous ratio by anyone’s standards.
#3 2012 – 53 goals in 51 games
Ronaldo saw his 27th birthday in 2012, and playing under Jose Mourinho at Real Madrid, the Portuguese helped Los Blancos win the 2011-12 season of La Liga in the first half of the calendar year, with his side scoring a record-breaking 121 goals along the way. In the latter half of the season, 26 of those goals came from CR7, who also hit 7 in the knockout stages of the Champions League.
Once 2012-13 came around, Ronaldo actually failed to score in the first 2 of Real’s league games – but after that, he seemingly couldn’t stop, hitting 14 in the following 15 games. He proved to be equally deadly in the group stages of the Champions League, too, scoring 6 goals in 6 games, including a hat-trick against Ajax.
Overall, the year 2012 saw him score 53 goals in 51 games – finding the net on an average of every 86 minutes, making it one of his very best years.
#2 2015 – 53 goals in 50 games
2015 saw Ronaldo score 2 more goals than he’d done in the previous year, but his haul of 53 goals in 50 games came at an average of a goal every 84 minutes, a slightly lower average than that of his 2014 efforts. Naturally, his goals again carried Real Madrid; both the 2014-15 and 2015-16 seasons saw them finish runners-up in La Liga, but 2015-16 saw Los Blancos go on to lift the Champions League.
The Portuguese scored his first goal of 2015 on the 4th of January, and started the year off in terrifying form, hitting 23 goals, including hat-tricks against Sevilla, Espanyol and Getafe, as well as a ridiculous five-goal plunder in a 9-1 thrashing of Granada. And although they were eliminated in the semi-finals, he also scored 5 goals in 6 Champions League games.
The start of 2015-16 was equally great for CR7. He smashed 5 goals past Espanyol in just the third league game of the season, and by the end of the calendar year, he’d scored 14 goals in La Liga action. And incredibly, Ronaldo scored a total of 11 goals in 6 games in Champions League action, including a hat-trick against Shakhtar Donetsk and 4 goals against Malmo.
#1 2013 – 53 goals in 44 games
By any mortal standards, scoring 53 goals in a calendar year is an achievement almost beyond belief. But to do it in 44 games – averaging a goal every 69 minutes – is simply ridiculous. The two seasons that encompassed the year 2013 – 2012-13 and 2013-14 – saw Ronaldo score a total of 106 goals in all competitions for Real Madrid, at the very peak of his powers.
The Portuguese opened 2013 by scoring two goals against Real Sociedad in a 4-3 win, and from there he went onto score 18 goals before 2012-13 was finished, including hat-tricks against Getafe and Sevilla. And the knockout stages of the Champions League saw him score 6, including 2 goals against his former club Manchester United.
The group stages of the 2013-14 Champions League – a competition Los Blancos went onto win – saw CR7 score a frightening 9 goals in 6 games, while the first half of that season’s La Liga competition saw him plunder 18 goals, including yet another 2 hat-tricks. Simply put, Ronaldo was closer to machine than man during this calendar year.
