It’s fair to say that Cristiano Ronaldo exceeded all expectations after completing his record-breaking £80 million move to Real Madrid from Manchester United in the summer of 2009.
Back then, £80 million was a mind-blowing amount of money to spend on a single player - even one as good as Ronaldo.
Everyone knew the Portuguese forward, who was crowned winner of the 2008 Ballon d’Or, was an incredibly special footballer. But the idea that he would go on to score 450 goals in 438 games for Real Madrid would have sounded preposterous at the time.
However, he took his game to a whole new level in Madrid, spurred on by his eternal rival Lionel Messi over at Barcelona.
If one scored two goals one night, the other would score two or three goals the next. This happened most weeks for nine remarkable years.
Cristiano is now widely regarded as arguably the greatest player in Real Madrid’s history, alongside the legendary Alfredo di Stefano, and deservedly so.
His goalscoring record may never be equalled or surpassed at the Bernabeu.
His lowest goals return for a single campaign for Los Blancos came during his first season with the Spanish giants.
Thirty-three goals in 35 games was still an excellent return - one that every striker would be delighted with - but it pales in comparison to the 50 and 60+ tallies that we’d see later during his spell in La Liga.
Despite that, Ronaldo was extremely fun to watch that season. He wasn’t ‘CR7’, either… he was actually ‘CR9’.
A video titled ‘CR9! Take me back…’ is currently going viral on Twitter and it’s an excellent watch…
Kids these days will never understand what a joy Ronaldo was to watch during his peak years.
As well as scoring plenty of goals - including several sensational free-kicks - he would also humiliate opponents almost every time he took to the pitch.
Although we don’t see too many skills from him these days - he is 36 years old, let’s not forget -
there’s no doubt that Ronaldo is one of the most skilful footballers of his generation.
The man had all sorts of tricks in his locker.
Let’s check out some of the reaction to the video…
Over a decade later and Ronaldo, who took Raul's No. 7 shirt in the summer of 2010 after the Spanish forward left Real Madrid for Schalke, is still shining at the highest level and breaking records in the process.
On Tuesday night, he became the first player to score 20 league goals in Europe’s top five leagues in each of the past 12 seasons when he netted Juventus's third goal in a 3-0 win over Spezia.
Legend.