Cristiano Ronaldo has scored 742 goals over the course of his extraordinary career.For Sporting Lisbon, Manchester United, Real Madrid and Juventus, the legendary forward has netted 641 goals in 854 appearances at the time of writing.And for Portugal, Ronaldo recently scored his 100th and 101st international goals.Some of those 742 goals have been magnificent.Long-range screamers, towering headers, stunning free-kicks… Ronaldo has scored all types of wonder-goals over the past two decades.
But a video has gone viral on social media showing some of the 35-year-old’s most incredible near misses from down the years.The two-minute video shows Ronaldo has been denied some unbelievable goals - many of which you probably haven’t seen before - usually because of the woodwork.This happens to all great strikers, of course, but Ronaldo’s collection of near misses is particularly eye-opening.Watch it here…The number of long-range efforts which would have flown in had they been a few centimetres lower is quite remarkable.The video doesn’t even feature what surely would have been the greatest goal Ronaldo ever scored.Back in 2010, Ronaldo scored a stunning individual goal while playing for Portugal against Spain - only for Nani, his former Manchester United teammate, to ruin it.Watch the goal here…
"I touched the ball because I thought I wasn't offside. Everything happened so quickly," Nani explained at the time. "After having time to think about it I apologised to Ronaldo. It was a great piece of play and I shouldn't have ruined it."
Ronaldo, to his credit, refused to blame Nani. Instead, he piled the blame on the match officials for failing to spot that the ball had already crossed the line before Nani’s intervention.
"I don't understand, even a blind man could see it was a goal. The ball was half a metre into the net," he told Marca. "I don't know if it's a coincidence or not but my best goals with the national team are being disallowed. I remember an overhead kick in the Bessa stadium which wasn't given."