Cristiano Ronaldo (born Cristiano Ronaldo dos Santos Aveiro) is a Portuguese soccer player. His full name is Ronaldo Luis Nazário de Lima, but he’s better known as “Ronaldo” or “Ronaldinho.” He was internationally acclaimed for his prolific goalscoring talent and his creative plays with the ball.
Cristiano Ronaldo was born to José Dinis Aveiro, a club equipment manager – but when it mattered most, he acted as the manager of his son. Months after Cristiano’s birth, he experienced a heart problem that required surgery – but he quickly recovered and later became one of the youngest ever to play for Sporting Lisbon.
A native of Brazil, Ronaldo stood 6 feet 1 inch (1.85 meters) tall. He started out as a right-winger but evolved into a forward with an unusually free-reined attacking style. His speed and cunning allowed him to mesmerize opposition defenders before opening up their defenses with high speed running with the ball at his feet; this would be followed by shots at goal or hard passes to fellow players making attacking runs.
Ronaldo began playing on the professional Sporting squad in 2002, which caught the attention of some major teams. In 2003, he went to play for Manchester United, and was an instant hit. He was soon said to be one of the best forwards in the game. His highest goal-scoring season with Manchester United was 2007-08, when he scored 42 League and Cup goals and earned the Golden Shoke award as Europe’s leading scorer, with 31 League goals. After helping Manchester United win the Champions League in 2008, Ronaldo took home FIFA World Player of the Year honors for his incredible 2007-08 campaign. He also led Manchester United to an appearance in the 2009 Champion’s League final which they lost to Barcelona.
Ronaldo, who was sold to Spain’s Real Madrid in 2009, scored the most goals (40) in La Liga history during the 2010–11 season. He also led his team to a La Liga championship. In 2014 he won another Ballon d’Or award for leading Madrid to a Champions League title. In 2014–15, Ronaldo led La Liga in scoring with 48 goals and helped his team win 11th Champions League title. He scored 42 goals for Real across all competitions in 2016-17, which resulted in his fifth career Ballon d’Or award. In 2017-18 Ronaldo had 44 goals in 44 games and led his team Real to their third straight Champions League title. His last season with Real was 2018 where he scored 28 times, his lowest domestic goal total since 2013.
Ronaldo was well-loved by the public, and he was known for having a great sense of style. In November 2016, sports star Ronaldo became the third player in history to sign a lifetime deal with Nike. And as an entrepreneur, his company CR7 made millions of dollars annually from deals with companies like Coca-Cola and EA Sports. For CR7, Ronaldo built his own brand by developing shoes, underwear and fragrances which have been very successful. As part of this success, some questions came up about Ronaldo’s taxes in Spain in 2015. In June 2017, Dutch prosecutors filed a lawsuit against him claiming he defrauded the Spanish government by hiding earnings related to his image rights. But these charges were refuted by Ronaldo himself who said: “I always pay what I should pay – really trying to be honest.” Finally, after a lengthy battle, in July 2018 he accepted a suspended two-year sentence and agreed to pay €21 million ($23 million) to settle all tax issues
