According to Prince Faisal Bin Turki, Cristiano Ronaldo needs to win as many titles as Lionel Messi to become the best player in history.
On September 15, the social media account @iMzMzi recognized Ronaldo as the best player in history,” along with a photo of Ronaldo wearing a shirt with the word “GOAT” and the number 900 goals.
GOAT is an acronym that stands for Best Player of All Time.
The Prince replied: “When he won the World Cup, 45 collective titles and eight Ballon d’Ors.”
The answer seems to refer to Messi, who won the 2022 World Cup with Argentina, and holds a record of 45 collective titles and eight Ballon d’Ors.
Faisal Bin Turki was the chairman of Al Nassr from 2009 to 2017. This position is currently vacant, following former chairman Ibrahim Al-Muhaidib’s decision to step down in August. Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund, PIF, owns 75% of Al Nassr’s shares, while the non-profit Al Nassr Foundation owns the remainder.
Ronaldo has played for Al Nassr since January 2023, scoring 68 goals in 75 games, but has not won any official titles for the club.
On September 13, before the 1-1 draw with Al Ahli in the National Championship, Al Nassr honored Ronaldo after he became the first player in history to reach the 900-goal mark in official tournaments at club level and scoring matches for the national team. In this statistic, Messi currently ranks second with 840 goals.
In terms of statistics, Ronaldo is also better than Messi in terms of the number of decisive goals that give the home team the victory, the number of goals that help the team take the lead and the number of goals scored with or without a dominant head-foot.
Ronaldo’s peak was nine years at Real, where he scored 450 goals in just 438 games. That means half of his career goals were scored for the Spanish club, while the number of goals for Man Utd, Juventus and the Portuguese national team also reached triple digits.
Ronaldo also holds the all-time scoring record in the Champions League, the European Championship, World Cup qualifiers and the Club World Cup. He also scored the most goals from penalties in history, with 164 goals, although the success rate of 84.5% is not the highest.