XtraTime Web Desk: Portugese superstar footballer Cristiano Ronaldo is easily one of the biggest headers on the planet. With a height of 1.87m and a thrust of a basketball player, Ronaldo is an expert in the aerial game and sometimes seems to stop in the air. The Juventus striker dominates several fundamentals of football. With speed, dribbling and a tremendous ease in finishing with both legs, the Portuguese seems to have perfected everything that could give him an advantage when it comes to putting the ball into the net. Above all he has the largest headers on the planet.
Ronaldo has so far scored 126 head goals in his whole career. Out of those 126 head goals, 70 is with Real Madrid. He has scored 24 goals with heads for Portugal. During his stint with Manchester United, Ronaldo scored 20 goals with headers. He has so far scored 11 head goals for his current side Juventus.
But the stamp of expert in the matter occurs in the case of Cristiano Ronaldo for reasons that go beyond the numbers. Let’s face it: the ace takes goals in his head to another level.
According to 1970 World Cup winning Brazilian forward Dada Maravilha, who was an excellent header,
“Ronaldo takes goals in his head to another level. For this reason, he leaves his mouth open frequently even those who understand the subject. “I see him doing things that even God doubts.”
He added, “Cristiano Ronaldo in the header is incomparable, without a chance. The closest to him today is 200 kilometers. I’ll be honest, and that will make me even a little jealous because I considered myself the best header in the world. But I will have to retire to my insignificance. The guy is a beast.”
Let’s look in details the top three head goals scored by Ronaldo in recent times. His header against Manchester United during Round 16 of the Champions League 2012-13, the goal he scored for Portugal in the 2016 Euro Final against Wales and the very recent goal he scored in December last year for Juventus, it caused astonishment with the painting on Sampdoria for the Italian Championship.
What do these three goals have in common? In all of them, Cristiano Ronaldo left more than 70 centimeters from the ground and exceeded 2.60m in height. Notice that, in the first and third cases, the opponent’s head was towards your hip.
The Portugese footballer in the header is incomparable, without a chance. When analyzing all 126 goals, it is possible to conclude that the crosses start from all sides of the field. In this case, there is an almost perfect balance: 63 came from the right and 59 from the left – the other four were born from rebounds. Regardless of the origin of the move, however, the ball found him most of the time in the central area of the area, close to the penalty mark.
At 1.87 in height, Cristiano Ronaldo has the drive of a basketball player. In 2012, a documentary sponsored by an automotive oil brand concluded, through tests, that Cristiano Ronaldo is able to jump 78 centimeters from the ground with the help of two strides. This is two centimeters more than the average of the athletes that were part of the last NBA Draft.