Cristiano Ronaldo has scored 166 career goals from the penalty spot
İdman.biz presents an article with a link to sport-express.ru.
Great analysis of the player’s relationship with the penalty kick.
The first weekend of October was filled with several enchanting episodes related to penalties. Girona goalkeeper Paulo Gassaniga saved three shots from Athletic players – Berenguer, Williams and Herrera. The Catalans eventually scored the winner in the 99th minute, also from the penalty spot. And in the match between Fiorentina and Milan, the goalkeepers shared the salvation. De Gea took two – from Theo and Abraham, and Maignan pulled from Keane.
Outside Europe, noticeable things also happened. It’s just that everything Ronaldo does is noticeable. Cristiano scored from 11 meters in the third championship match in a row and updated his own record for goals from the point – there are 166 goals. The Portuguese’s goal inspired a slight nostalgia for the times of his peak, when one of the main complaints against the player concerned precisely this topic. Surely you remember how the nickname Penaldo stuck to him on the Internet.
Indeed, the name Cristiano is closely associated with 11-meter players. He will soon reach the 200 attempt mark. All that remains is for someone from Al-Nasr or the Portuguese national team to set up four times in the penalty area. So I wanted to delve deeper into the relationship between the penalty kicker. Look at the numbers and compare.
So, 196 shots, 166 goals, 30 errors. Ronaldo has scored most often for Real Madrid – 79 times. At Manchester United he has 21 goals, at Juventus – 29, at Al-Nasr – 17, in the national team – 20. Madrid also has the most missed attempts – 13. But if we put the percentage of accurate attempts at the forefront, then The Portuguese does the worst job in the national team – eight failures and 72% hits. In Saudi Arabia, by the way, it doesn’t smear at all yet.
All Ronaldo penalties
Speaking about the average performance in the 11-meter, one should compare Cristiano with other masters. At the end of May, 90min, for example, released a ranking of the best penalty takers in history. This is not a statistical thing, but a subjective opinion of the publication. Ronaldo took second place there and lost only to Southampton legend Matt Le Tissier, who scored 48 out of 49. 97.9% accuracy! Ronaldo, with his 84.7%, really looks weaker.
And in general, there were and are enough football players in the world who, in this indicator, are superior to the five-time Ballon d’Or winner: Balotelli, Ben Arfa, Muriel, Haaland, Lewandowski, Dost, Bruno Fernandes and many, many others. Some, like Palmer and Yaya Toure, ran to celebrate after a hit 100% of the time. The only nuance is that each of them has never had nearly as many attempts in their lives. Naturally, if you break 200, anyone will make at least ten mistakes. That is, Cristiano cannot, of course, be called the best performer in history, but for such sky-high numbers the results are impressive.
Ronaldo is the main record holder of the season. Cristiano remains the best at 39 years old
Here you need to understand that two hundred approaches were not formed out of nowhere. Sportingly selfish, Ronaldo is willing to share potential goals in exceptional cases. Benzema reached the point only three times between the summer of 2009 and the summer of 2018, and Bale in the Cristiano era also three times. Moreover, once both Karim and Gareth received such an opportunity in the same match. It’s just that the Portuguese was not in the lineup for the La Liga game against Las Palmas on March 31, 2018 – he was gaining strength for the legendary overhead kick to Buffon. And at the same time, I probably bit all my elbows in thoughts about the missed take.
For comparison: Suarez took penalties 14 times in Barcelona under Messi, Neymar – 18 times. By the way, the Brazilian has almost 20% of his career goals from 11-meter shots; no one else has so many in the 21st century. Ronaldo is close, but slightly lower – in third place with 18.3%. Between them, if anything, Harry Kane.
It is important that all statistics given above do not take into account post-match series. How is Cristiano doing with them? Saturated is the right word. Ronaldo had 16 episodes in his career. Four times he didn’t even approach the ball, although he was on the field. All cases have one thing in common – the Portuguese team did not get to the fifth kick, which the striker likes to take for himself, because there is a high probability that it will be decisive, as, for example, in the 2015/16 Champions League final. The rest – ten goals, two misfires.
Ronaldo’s post-match penalties
Both failures could have left a huge imprint on the legacy of the great football player, but they passed. John Terry helped in the Moscow Champions League final, and in the semi-final four years later, Sergio Ramos concentrated all the noise on himself, launching the ball somewhere in the area of the upper floors of Madrid high-rise buildings. The same Messi has a worse reputation as a penalty taker, because he missed more brightly, including in the post-match series. The most memorable: the 2016 Copa final – Leo gave it higher, the trophy went to the Chileans.
It seems that the nickname Penaldo is generally appropriate. Just don’t use it in negative tones. The man lived and played for years as one of the two best in the world and deservedly received the right to shoot from 11 meters. And, what is much more important, he often coped with pressure, justified everyone’s trust and never made a fatal mistake. He also set records. What questions?
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