Introduction:

In this article, we will see about the life, struggle & success story of the world-famous football player. Cristiano Ronaldo is a Portuguese professional footballer who was named the greatest Portuguese player of all time by the Portuguese Football federation. He is often considered by many the best player in the world and widely regarded as one of the greatest players of all time.

Poverty:

• Cristiano Ronaldo dos Santos Aveiro was born in the São Pedro parish of Funchal, the capital of the Portuguese island of Madeira. He is the fourth and youngest child of Maria Dolores dos Santos Viveiros da Aveiro, a cook, and José Dinis Aveiro, a municipal gardener and part-time kit man.
• His mother revealed that she wanted to abort him due to poverty, his father’s alcoholism, and having too many children already, but her doctor refused to perform the procedure. Ronaldo grew up in an impoverished Catholic home, sharing a room with all his siblings.

Struggles:

• In 1997, aged 12, he went on a three-day trial with Sporting CP, who signed him for a fee of £1,500. He subsequently moved from Madeira to Alcochete, near Lisbon, to join Sporting’s youth academy. By age 14, Ronaldo believed he could play semi-professionally and agreed with his mother to cease his education to focus entirely on football. While popular with other students at school, he had been expelled after throwing a chair at his teacher, who he said had “disrespected” him.
• One year later, he was diagnosed with tachycardia, a condition that could have forced him to give up playing football. Ronaldo underwent heart surgery where a laser was used to cauterize multiple cardiac pathways into one, altering his resting heart rate. He was discharged from the hospital hours after the procedure and resumed training a few days later.

Determination:

• Cristiano wasn’t born a legend, but he did something early on which most likely impacted the trajectory of his life. He decided at a young age to be the best in the world.
• Soccer was a big deal in Madeira, as it is in most of Europe, and Cristiano loved the sport. He loved it so much, that even when they couldn’t afford a ball to play the game with, he would use bottles, or makes a ball made of rags instead. But a lack of money could not stop his insatiable love for the game.
• Ronaldo was lighting fast, had great footwork, and loved winning. And it was this concoction of talent and his dedication to being the best that would pave the way for his meteoric rise. A rise that saw him by the young age of 10, to be considered the best on his entire island.

Sacrifice:

Indeed, Ronaldo’s talent was noticed, and after playing for two of the island’s amateur teams, he was offered an opportunity to be groomed to play football for one of Portugal’s most well-known football clubs. The club was known as Sporting CP, and it had a youth academy located 600 miles across the ocean.

Now, this was no small matter, however, as it required Cristiano to make a massive sacrifice.

It is a sacrifice that not everyone would make. He had had to make the decision to leave the island of Madeira and his entire family at the young age of 11. Fortunately, he made the sacrifice, and it was one would that put him on the path to stardom.

Career and Accolades:

• In just six short years after leaving his hometown and his family, his talent, dedication to training, and prowess on the pitch (field) would have him become the youngest player ever to sign a contract with Europe’s most prestigious professional football league, ‘Manchester United’. And this transaction would become one of the most expensive transfer contracts. Later he played for top clubs like Real Madrid, and Juventus where he broke many goal-scoring records and created history. Currently, Ronaldo plays for Manchester United.
• Cristiano Ronaldo has managed to rack up many accolades. Here are just a handful of his biggest accomplishments:
• Ronaldo has won five Ballon d’Or awards and four European Golden Shoes, the most by a European player, FIFA World Player of the Year: 2008, The Best FIFA Men’s Player twice, 6 Globe Soccer Awards for the Best Player of the Year, and many more. He has won 32 trophies in his career, including seven league titles, five UEFA Champions Leagues, one UEFA European Championship, and one UEFA Nations League. Ronaldo holds the records for most appearances (183), most goals (140), and assists (42) in the Champions League, most goals in the European Championship (14), most international goals by a male player (115), and most international appearances by a European male (186). He is one of the few players to have made over 1,100 professional career appearances and has scored over 800 official senior career goals for club and country. In addition to this, he is the first soccer player ever to earn over $1 billion.
• He has his awards and trophies in a museum of Madeira. On 23 July 2016, following Portugal’s triumph at Euro 2016, Madeira Airport in Funchal was renamed as Cristiano Ronaldo International Airport.

Tough Rivalry:

• The Messi-Ronaldo rivalry is a sporting rivalry in football encouraged by the media and fans that involves footballers Lionel Messi and Cristiano Ronaldo, mainly for being contemporaries and for their similar records and sporting success. Together they have achieved various historical milestones in the sport, coming to be considered two of the best players of all time.
• They are two of the most decorated footballers ever, having won a combined 71 major trophies (Messi 37, Ronaldo 34) during their senior careers thus far, and have regularly broken the 50-goal barrier in a single season. They are amongst the eight players to score over 700 goals each in their careers for club and country. Ronaldo holds the record for most official goals in a career. Ronaldo has received praise for his physical attributes, goal scoring skills, leadership, and performance under pressure, while Messi is lauded for his combination of dribbling, playmaking, passing, and goal scoring.

Outside Football:

• Cristiano has proven to be a success both on and off the field. He’s also a successful businessman who has a strong personal brand and earns plenty of money as the owner of multiple hotels in Portugal, gyms throughout Europe, and a hair transplant clinic in Spain.

Charity Work:

• He is donating a huge sum of his money to charities and helping the needy and is known as the most charitable sportsperson.
• Cristiano has helped many people, but his core demographic is the little ones. When he was asked to donate a shirt to raise funds for a vital operation for eleven months old Erik, he didn’t just donate a shirt; he paid for his full treatment!
• In 2005 he visited young Martunis, an Indonesian tsunami survivor. He raised funds and paid for the education of the young survivor. Now, eleven years later, Martunis is signed by Cristiano’s old club; Sporting Lisbon.
• In order to raise money to help rebuild schools in Gaza, he donated his golden shoe for over 1.5 million euros.
• Cristiano doesn’t have a single tattoo, because he is a regular blood donor.

Success Secret:

• He has unmatched confidence in himself, he has an inspiring and clear vision of who he wants to be and where he wants to go, he has an insane work ethic and is dedicated to self-improvement, and lastly, he has an insatiable will to win. Even many sports players consider Cristiano Ronaldo as their inspiration for his fitness and determination to be the best.
• Here are some words that Cristiano Ronaldo has uttered himself that sums up the ethos that guides his success:

“In my mind, not just this year, always, I am always the best. And I am always going to say that.”
“I want to be remembered as part of the group of the greatest players ever.”
“All the achievement that I get comes from dedication and hard work.”
“Winning – that’s the most important to me. It’s as simple as that.”
-Cristiano Ronaldo

Conclusion:

Thus Cristiano Ronaldo’s success story that describes his journey from a poor kid living on a remote island in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean to becoming the most famous athlete in the world is an inspiration to many.

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