Cristiano Ronaldo has become the first player ever to score in six different World Cups. On Tuesday evening, during the match between Portugal and Uzbekistan, the phenomenon needed just six minutes to silence all his critics and score his ninth World Cup goal. He achieved this feat by scoring in 2006, 2010, 2014, 2018, 2022, and now 2026.
Ronaldo had been enduring a difficult period with the national team. In his previous 10 matches in major tournaments – spanning the World Cup and the Euros – he failed to score and recorded only one assist, following a prolific stretch where he scored 22 goals and provided eight assists in 43 games.
In the 39th minute, he added another goal to bring his World Cup tally to 10 goals, marking the highest number of World Cup goals in Portuguese history. In doing so, he surpassed Eusébio, who scored nine goals during a single World Cup in 1966. Along the way, Ronaldo also became the first player to score 10 goals in the Euros and 10 goals in the World Cup.
The brace also turned the current tournament into his second-most prolific World Cup. In 2018, he scored four goals, while he recorded only a single goal in each of his other four tournament appearances. Ronaldo has now made his 24th World Cup appearance, trailing only Lionel Messi with 28 appearances and Lothar Matthaus with 25.
Messi scored a brace on Monday, which extended the gap between his first goal and his latest goal in the tournament to 20 years and 11 days. For Ronaldo, who also scored a brace on Tuesday, the span between his first and most recent goal is identical at 20 years and 11 days. This statistic could change later in the tournament if either of them scores.
