Here’s a simple exercise: count all of Cristiano Ronaldo’s 141 international goals for Portugal. Then take away every penalty. Every friendly. Every game against Luxembourg, Andorra, and Liechtenstein. Take out goals from Nations League matches, from Euro qualifiers, from games Portugal didn’t even win. Then apply a filter that says only goals against World Cup winners count. What number are you left with?
Zero.
That’s the number a certain type of internet analyst arrives at after stripping away every category they deem fraudulent. It’s not serious, of course. But it is a lot of fun to walk through.
The whole thing started when someone pointed out that Harry Kane’s international tally looks less impressive once you remove all the penalties, free kicks, headers, left-footed shots, and goals scored on Tuesdays. That was a joke. But the joke has legs, and the legs carried someone to Ronaldo’s numbers. The result is a spreadsheet that would make an accountant blush.
First, the obvious stuff
Penalties are the easiest target. Ronaldo has taken a lot of them for Portugal. Twenty, to be exact. Take those out and his total drops to 121. Not bad, but we’re just getting started.
Friendlies are next. Exhibition games don’t count in other sports, so why should they count in soccer? That’s the logic, anyway. Ronaldo has 22 friendly goals. Only one of those was a penalty, which is already gone. So we chop off 21 more. Down to 100.
Then you start looking at the opponents. Luxembourg has conceded 11 goals to Ronaldo. That’s more than some entire national teams have scored against him. Luxembourg is not a soccer powerhouse. Neither are Andorra, Estonia, or Panama. Strip out all goals against non-elite European minnows and the number drops to 71.
Now we’re getting somewhere.
Nations League. Come on.
The Nations League is a tournament made up. It was created to replace friendlies, but it’s still friendlies with a trophy attached. Ronaldo scored 11 goals in the Nations League, including a hat trick against Switzerland in the semifinals. That hat trick is hilarious to remove, because it happened in a competitive knockout game. But by our rules, it’s gone. Down to 60.
Euro qualifiers? Also gone. Ronaldo has 41 goals in Euro qualifying. That’s more than Alan Shearer scored for England in his entire international career. But Shearer’s goals count because he scored them in tournaments. Ronaldo’s don’t because they came against Latvia and Lithuania in March. Bye-bye. Down to 35.
Games Portugal didn’t win
This is the most arbitrary rule yet, but we’ll apply it anyway. Any goal scored in a game Portugal did not win is meaningless. That gets rid of Ronaldo’s first international goal, a consolation in a 2-1 loss to Greece at Euro 2004. It also takes out two goals in a 3-3 draw with Hungary that kept Portugal alive at Euro 2016. Two more against Hungary in a 2-2 World Cup qualifier. A hat trick against Spain at the 2018 World Cup? Portugal drew that game 3-3. Two of those goals survive? No, one was a penalty. So the non-penalty one is gone. Down to 27.
The elite filter
Now we’re down to 27 goals and we’re running out of rules. So we invent a new one: only goals against teams that have won a World Cup count as legitimate. That means no more goals against the Netherlands, who have never won it. No more goals against Sweden, Northern Ireland, or Morocco. No more goals against the Czech Republic or Wales. All gone.
Ronaldo scored 27 goals against non-World-Cup-winning teams. So we remove all 27. Final tally: zero.
This is absurd. It’s also beautiful in its own way. The point isn’t that Ronaldo is a fraud. The point is that you can make any number say anything if you try hard enough. But it’s still funny to think about how many international goals you have to remove before the world’s all-time leading scorer becomes a guy who never scored for his country.
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