Early Life
Cristiano Ronaldo dos Santos Aveiro was born on February 5, 1985, in Funchal, Madeira, Portugal. He is the youngest of the four children had by Maria Dolores dos Santos and José Dinis Aveiro. Ronaldo’s dad was the one who introduced him to soccer in the beginning because he worked as an equipment manager at a boys club. His early life was pretty tough, seeing as his family did not have a large amount of money, so to keep everyone fed and keep some financial stability, his mom worked as a cook and a cleaning person. In 2005, when he was playing for Manchester United, his father died of kidney problems because of his drinking. In 2007, his mother struggled with breast cancer. The death of his dad was especially hard for him because he and his dad were close. He had always pushed for his father to go to rehab, but his father always refused. Even when Cristiano was younger, he loved soccer so much that he would even sometimes escape out of his bedroom window with a ball when he was supposed to be doing homework.
Beginning His Career
In one of his performances with Portugal against Manchester United, the opposing team was so amazed by his talent that many of Manchester’s players asked their manager to try and get him on their team. In 2001, when he was just 16, Manchester United paid more than £12 million to have Ronaldo signed. In 2004, while playing for Manchester in the FA cup final, he scored their first three goals and helped them win the championship. In 2007, Ronaldo signed a contract with Manchester for five years, where they paid him £31 million. Only one year later, he helped the club in one of their best seasons in history, setting a record of 42 goals in one season, which earned him a FIFA world player of the year award for 2008. In the time that he spent playing for Manchester United, he ended up helping them to 3 premier league titles. In 2009, Real Madrid, a Spanish soccer club, offered to pay Manchester United a record of 131 million dollars to sign Ronaldo.
In 2018, the Italian Serie A club Juventus offered to pay Real Madrid $140 million to join their team. After he left Real, he wrote an open letter on their website that read, “These years at Real Madrid and in this city of Madrid have quite possibly been the happiest years of my life. I only have feelings of great gratitude to this club, to the fans and to the city. I can only give thanks to all of them for the love and affection that I have received.” During his first season with Juventus, he scored ten times in his first fourteen games. After leading his team to its eighth consecutive Serie A title, he was named the league’s MVP in May 2019. On July 10, 2016, while being his national team’s captain, he led Portugal to the European championship against France.
In my opinion, one of Ronaldo’s best quotes is “Listen, I’m not going to change the world. You’re not going to change the world. But we can help, we can all help.”
Find more information at https://www.biography.com/athlete/cristiano-ronaldo
