How 2007 red card helped turn Ronaldo into the world's deadliest striker

The precise moment that helped turn Cristiano Ronaldo from a Premier League star into the most prolific goalscorer the world has ever seen has been pinpointed in a new book on the Portuguese phenomenon.

The revelation has come from Messi vs. Ronaldo: One Rivalry, Two GOATs, and the Era That Remade the World's Game, and details how a petulant red card picked up in a top-flight fixture against Portsmouth in 2007, actually paved the way for a month’s worth of intensive training that propelled him to his freakish feats in front of goal.

The catalyst for Ronaldo’s incredible change in front of goal came at Fratton Park on the 15th of August, 2007.

Enduring a frustrating start to the campaign, Manchester United were on their way to a second successive disappointing draw following their opening day stalemate with Reading at Old Trafford.

Being held 1-1, Ronaldo’s anger got the better of him in the latter stages, as he clashed with Portsmouth’s Scotland international Richard Hughes in the 85th minute, appearing to stick his head into the midfielder’s face.

Making the most of the contact, Hughes walked away from the clash holding his forehead and having had the incident played out right in front of him, referee Steve Bennett – who had sent Ronaldo off the season before for an angry lunge on Manchester City’s Andrew Cole – had no hesitation in pulling out his red card once again.

Sir Alex Ferguson fumed at the decision, but there was little to be done as his No 7 was hit with a three-match ban, keeping him out of their next three League clashes against Manchester City, Tottenham and Sunderland.

Not only that, but the match at home with Sunderland would be proceeded by an international break, meaning Ronaldo would not be able to pull on a United jersey for another month, when they faced Everton at Goodison Park in the middle of September.

As the book points out, this amounted to football’s equivalent of a sabbatical, with Ronaldo not travelling with squad on road games and allowed to skip both tactical and recovery sessions.

With his newfound free time, he decided to embark on more training and enlisted the help of Rene Meulensteen as the pair worked on the forward’s finishing.

The Dutchman had identified a flaw in Ronaldo’s game, in that he was more concerned with the quality of his goals, as opposed to the quantity.

Meulensteen made him study videos of former Manchester United strikers such as Eric Cantona and Ruud van Nistelrooy until the point it clicked with the Portugal star.

They then headed out on to the training field, where Meulensteen set up a series of shooting drills.

As the book points out: ‘He designed a series of shooting drills to make Ronaldo aware of his positioning on the field and show him how to score from different angles inside the box.

‘He devised a map of the pitch and goal to categorize every type of finish. Focusing on three distinct locations—directly in front of goal (zone 1), either side (zone 2), and out wide (zone 3) and nine different areas of the goal.’

Ronaldo’s enthusiasm for the sessions was endless, with Meulensteen regularly coming into Carrington to find the striker waiting at his office door each morning to continue their sessions.

Such was the intensity of the training, the coach estimated that Ronaldo scored 5,000 goals during their month together.

‘His whole mindset towards finishing had changed,” Meulensteen told the authors. ‘It went from ‘I want to score the goal of the season’ to “I want to be a goal machine.” He was on a mission.’

The results, both short-term and long-term, were plain to see. Having scored 17 times in the Premier League the previous season, Ronaldo went on to score 31 during the 2007-08 campaign, and 42 across all competitions.

With myriad trophies and personal accolades to his name, He is recognised by International Federation of Football History & Statistics as the top scorer in football history, with 813 goals to date.

That, as it turns out, is in no small part thanks to the tuition of Muelensteen, and that red card at Fratton Park 15 years ago.

Messi vs. Ronaldo: One Rivalry, Two GOATs, and the Era That Remade the World's Game by Joshua Robinson and Jonathan Clegg. Published by Mariner Books, an imprint of HarperCollins, on 10th November 2022. Click here to pre-order.