Ronaldo - his best matches of all-time

As far as professional football players go, especially those that played as strikers, it just doesn’t get much better than Ronaldo. After all, there is a reason that he is referred to as ‘The Phenomenon’ in Brazil today. His skills were legendary, his performances were incredible, and his legacy speaks for itself. Within this quick post, we’d like to take a look back at some of our favorite matches that Ronaldo played in for both club and country.

He’s been responsible for some pretty special moments on the pitch, so without further ado, let’s get started with the first game that we loved - all the way back in 2003.

Champions League hat-trick vs Manchester United - 2003

If you follow Champions League football, you will know that there was a period of time in which Manchester United was just something else in this competition. With some awesome players under the reign of Sir Alex Ferguson, Manchester United were always heavy favorites for the event around this time. However, in 2003, during the second leg of Madrid vs Manchester United - Ronaldo showed what makes him so special.

In this game, Ronaldo managed to score a hat-trick against arguably one of the best teams in the world at the time. Since this game was also played at Old Trafford, he showed that he doesn’t mind where he plays, he just cared about getting the victory. After hitting home his three goals and being substituted on the stroke of 80 minutes, the entire stadium stood up to applaud what he had just done. This doesn’t happen all that often in football, especially when it’s a game as important as the Champions League quarter-final.

World Cup qualification vs Argentina - 2004

Although Ronaldo was just sensational during his time at Real Madrid, it’s not like he was a player that just put on a show in club football. In fact, this couldn’t be further from the truth. When he put on the Brazilian national shirt, it would be fair to say that he didn’t mess around. And although you could put a highlight reel together that lasts for hours, this game was just classic Ronaldo. During the qualification game against Argentina, he scored yet another hat-trick, and since Brazil and Argentina are huge rivals - this game was pretty sweet for the millions of Brazilian football fans.

Although back in the day it was almost guaranteed that Brazil would qualify for the World Cup, it wasn’t expected that they would dispatch Argentina with such ease. But then again, when Ronaldo was on the field, anything could happen. His performance that day was so special that Argentinian legends like Messi and the late Maradonna would regularly speak of how he just destroyed Argentina - almost single-handedly.

Corinthians vs Santos - Paulistão - 2009

Now we are getting to the twilight of Ronaldo’s career, but we just had to include this one since it was when he returned to play in his home nation of Brazil. There are some pretty fierce rivalries between teams in Brazil, but few are as intense as Corinthians and Santos. During this Paulistao game, Ronaldo hit the back of the net twice, but the second goal he scored was just out of this world. He actually managed to chip the goalkeeper from around 30 yards out, and the noise in the stadium just absolutely erupted. This performance was observed by another legend in the stands too, in the form of Pele.

Since this was the final of the state championships, it showed that he could still deliver when he wanted to, especially in big games. And even more interestingly, after he played that game there was a flurry of people wanting him to return to play for Brazil. Pretty much all of the bookmakers in Brazil started to take wagers on this occurring, especially since the Brazilian president also publicly announced that he wanted this to happen.

Ultimately, Ronaldo didn’t return to play international football for Brazil, but we can still remember the excitement about him coming back around that time.

Conclusion

Ronaldo was just incredible during his career, and this has been shown through the series of hat-tricks and sensational goals he has scored throughout the years. There have been few since that play a style that comes close to what he could do, but at least we can look back through the video footage to relive his best moments. In fact, we would recommend that you do exactly that for the matches we’ve mentioned!