Ronaldo makes history as first player to score at six World Cups
There was real pressure on Cristiano Ronaldo heading into Tuesday’s match against Uzbekistan in Houston. Portugal had drawn 1-1 with DR Congo in their opening Group K fixture — a result described by many observers as an embarrassment — and in the days that followed, the question circulating wasn’t whether Portugal could win the World Cup, it was whether a 41-year-old still deserved to be starting for them. Ronaldo had gone 90 minutes against Congo without a shot on target and barely a meaningful touch on the ball.
Six minutes into the next game, the argument was over.
João Cancelo delivered a low cross from the right, Ronaldo met it inside the box and drilled it into the net off his right foot. It was a clean, confident finish — and it was the goal that made him the first person, man or woman, to score at six separate FIFA World Cups. The stadium rose. Ronaldo turned away, arms out. The weight of the week lifted.
He wasn’t finished. A counter-attack in the 39th minute saw Bruno Fernandes thread a perfect through-ball between the Uzbekistan defence. Ronaldo ran onto it, took one touch, and poked it into the bottom-left corner. 3-0 at half-time. He nearly had a third just before the break — chipping the keeper, only for Abdukodir Khusanov to clear off the line from the goal-mouth — and pushed for it again in the second half before Abduvohid Nematov blocked him with a sharp save. Nuno Mendes scored Portugal’s second from a clever free-kick routine. An own goal from Nematov made it four. Rafael Leão collected a loose ball and lashed it into the roof of the net in the 87th minute for five. It finished 5-0.
The record itself needs some context. Lionel Messi has also appeared at six World Cups, and he too is at this tournament in North America — they remain the only two men in history to have played at six editions. But Messi did not score at the 2010 tournament in South Africa, when Argentina were managed by Diego Maradona, and that gap is what left the door open. Ronaldo stepped through it in the sixth minute on Tuesday.
Going into this tournament, Ronaldo had eight World Cup goals across five previous tournaments. His first came in 2006 in Germany, when he was 21 and Portugal reached the semi-finals — still the country’s best performance since third place in 1966. He scored once in South Africa 2010, once in Brazil 2014. At Russia 2018 he produced perhaps his most iconic World Cup display, scoring a hat-trick against Spain in the group stage and completing it with a 30-yard free-kick in the 88th minute. At Qatar 2022, already considered past his peak by many, he still scored — a penalty against Ghana — to become the first man to score at five different World Cups.
Tuesday’s brace gave him 10 career World Cup goals in total, surpassing Eusébio to become Portugal’s all-time leading scorer in the competition. His international tally now stands at 145 goals, a record he holds 23 clear of Messi. He is, at 41 years and 138 days, the second-oldest player to score at a World Cup, behind only Roger Milla of Cameroon, who netted at 42 years and 39 days at USA 94. He is also, according to ESPN’s statistics team, the oldest player to score twice in a single World Cup match — a record Messi himself had set earlier in this very tournament before Ronaldo broke it.
The win moved Portugal to the top of Group K on four points, one ahead of Colombia. Their final group game will determine how they enter the round of 32. But with this performance answered the critics temporarily, and with the possibility of a Ronaldo-Messi quarter-final still alive if both sides win their respective groups, the tournament’s defining narrative has found its shape.
One record Ronaldo has yet to break: all 10 of his World Cup goals have come in the group stage. He has played six knockout games across four tournaments and never scored in elimination football. The chance to fix that, at what is expected to be his final World Cup, is still very much in play.
