Cristiano Ronaldo He has a very special appointment this Wednesday at Old Trafford. The Portuguese will become the player with the most Champions League matches played in the history of the competition. 178 games are the ones that he will carry on his back once he steps onto the pitch to receive Villarreal, thus leaving behind the tie with Iker Casillas. A figure that will continue to grow, as surely does his scoring record, also a record in the competition with 135 goals to date.
October 1, 2003 Cristiano Ronaldo debuted in the Champions League. He was then 18 years and 238 days old, when Sir Alex Ferguson decided to enter the eleven in his first game of the group stage of the Champions League in a duel between Manchester United and Stuttgart in the German countryside. He began his career in the competition, with a result (2-1) that did not presage the idyll that the Portuguese was going to establish with the Champions League.
Almost 18 years later, Cristiano Ronaldo He dons the Manchester United shirt again in a Champions League match, this time in front of his fans. There in Old Trafford, it will set a new milestone in the history of the Champions League. The Portuguese will break the tie with Iker Casillas and he will reign alone as the player with the most matches played in the top European club competition. Against Villarreal, on the second day of the group stage that takes place this Wednesday, September 29, on September 7 red devils he will accumulate 178 matches in the Champions League.
But this is not only his only source of pride. Cristiano Ronaldor you can boast a large number of Champions League records. With 135 goals he is the top scorer in the history of the competition, he also stands out as the top assistant, with 42 goal passes. The 17 goals he scored in the same season in the Champions League are still a record, he did so with the Real Madrid shirt in the 13/14 campaign.
Up to 20 records for Cristiano Ronaldo in the Champions League
Those are not the only feats of Cristiano Ronaldo on the Champions League, competition to which he claimed to put his name just after the Thirteenth with Real Madrid in Kiev. The Portuguese is also the player who has scored the most goals in knockout rounds (67), the one who has converted the most penalties in the Champions League (19), the one who has won the most finals in the UEFA Champions League (5).
He is also the only player to have scored in three Champions League finals, the only player to have scored in all group stage matches and only he has managed to see the goal consecutively in eleven different matches. As if that were not enough, he can add to his list of records in the Champions League that he is the only one who has scored ten goals against a single club, the one that has been the most goalscorer in the competition and the only footballer who has scored three hat-tricks in the same season.
He was the first player to reach 100 goals in the Champions League, the first to score 100 goals for a club – Real Madrid – and the one to have scored the most goals in a group stage in the same season. Nor has anyone managed to score at least 10 goals in seven consecutive seasons in the Champions League and it is the one that has won the most matches in the competition. Only one of these records is shared with Leo Messi, the one that refers to the hat-tricks scored in total in the Champions League -eight-.
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