Cristiano Ronaldo celebrated his 40th birthday on Wednesday, February 5, 2025, with no signs of slowing down his majestic career.
The five times Ballon d’Or winner increased his record to 923 goals after scoring twice in Al Nassr’s 4-0 triumph over Al Wasl in Monday’s Asian Champions League. It was his 700th club career win.
Beyond that, the Portugal captain raised his record football appearances to 1, 265, making him the all-time outfield appearance-maker.
It is a proven fact that strikers often have shorter professional careers compared to other positions due to the physically demanding nature of their role, which requires high levels of pace, explosiveness, and consistent finishing ability.
Strikers tend to decline with age, making it difficult to maintain the same level of performance at a top level for a long time; but that is not for CR7, as he is still firing from all cylinders.
It is difficult to come to terms with the fact that Ronaldo played alongside Wayne Rooney, Ruud van Nistelrooy, and Paul Scholes, among others, and still banging goals at 40.
As of his 40th birthday, Ronaldo has played 1,265 matches in his career, the vast majority of them for Real Madrid (438), Manchester United (346) and Portugal (217). That is over a hundred more games under his belt than his eternal rival Lionel Messi.
Read also: Cristiano Ronaldo at 40: A look at his 5 iconic goal celebrations
The only three players in the history of football who have made more appearances than Ronaldo are all goalkeepers.
Peter Shilton – 1,396 appearances
Peter Shilton is the all-footballer with the highest record of appearances with 1,396. Shilts made his debut for the Foxes before the 1966 World Cup and served as a backup for Wimbledon, Coventry City, and West Ham in the Premier League (albeit without playing a game for any of them).
He eventually made the final appearances of his career with Leyton Orient in the old Third Division back in 1996-97, when he was 48 years old – a short stint which made him the first (and still only) player to play over a thousand games in the Football League.
England’s all-time most-capped player (125 games) played over 300 games for his hometown club Leicester City and notched over 200 for Nottingham Forest, Derby County, and Southampton as well as over a hundred for Stoke City.
Fabio Maciel– 1,344+ appearances
Fábio Maciel was born on September 30, 1980, he was simply known as Fábio, and a Brazilian footballer who plays as a goalkeeper for Fluminense.
He currently has the second-most official appearances ever for a professional football player, with over 1,300, and the most official appearances at club level.
He is spent his entire career in Brazil, the bulk of his appearances (955) coming for Cruzeiro in a mammoth 16-year stint between 2005 and 2021.
After leaving Cruzeiro in his forties, he joined their top-flight rivals Fluminense, where he added almost another 200 games to his tally.
The 44-year-old finally got his hands on the Copa Libertadores in 2023, starting in the final against Boca Juniors, while last year he made a further 59 appearances in all competitions.
Meanwhile, Fabio is gearing up for another season as Fluminense’s No.1, who knows, if does, it means the former England ‘keeper could even drop down to third in the coming years.
Paul Bastock – 1,284+ appearances
Paul Bastock is the definition of a lower-league journeyman. He started out at Coventry City in the mid-1980s, part of the 1987 Sky Blues’ FA Youth Cup side that beat a Southampton Under-18s side including Alan Shearer and Matt Le Tissier en route to lifting the trophy.
Unlike other top contenders, he never quite made it at the top level, but he did go on to represent well over 20 different clubs in the lower reaches of the English football pyramid in a career that spanned three and a half decades.
It was only in 2023, when he was in his 50s, that Bastock finally hung up his gloves at National League outfit Boston United while simultaneously serving as assistant manager to Norwich City cult hero Ian Culverhouse.
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