Juventus forward Cristiano Ronaldo has overtaken Pele on the list of top goalscorers in the history of professional football.
Ronaldo netted his 757th and 758th career goals in Sunday’s 4-1 win over Udinese, moving him one ahead of Brazil legend Pele, who racked up 757 officially recognised goals during his career with Santos and New York Cosmos.
Santos recently joined Pele in arguing that his goal tally is not actually correct, claiming that he actually scored 1,091 goals for the Brazilian side alone, but the reality is the record books believe Pele only bagged 757 goals in legitimate, competitive games. No friendlies, soz.
Ronaldo is now one ahead of Pele as his 83rd goal for Juventus took him to 758 for club and country. The Portugal international sits on 102 goals for his country, adding to the 450 he managed for Real Madrid, his 118 for Manchester United and the five he managed during his time with Sporting CP.
Get ready for him to move into top spot as well.
The record is currently held by Slavia Prague legend Josef Bican, who racked up 759 goals between 1931 and 1955 while playing across Austria and the Czech Republic.
That means Ronaldo, who sits on 18 goals from 15 games so far this season, needs just one to tie the record and two to make it his own.
Ronaldo’s first chance to break the record will come on Wednesday when Juventus travel to Serie A leaders AC Milan, but he’ll be confident of having moved to the top of the mountain by the time the meeting with Sassuolo comes to an end the following Sunday.
The win over Udinese saw Juventus climb up to fifth in Serie A, ten points behind leaders Milan with one game in hand.
Despite their disappointing league standing, Juventus only lost their first Serie A game of the season on December 22, a 3-0 loss to Fiorentina, but Andrea Pirlo’s problem has been too many draws – six from 14 games.