#4 Ronaldo Nazario
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Before Cristiano was the main Ronaldo dominating European football, a certain Brazilian incarnation, what some like to think of as the “original”, was busy playing some of the best football ever produced by one individual.
For Real Madrid, Ronaldo was often their best striker – he spent five seasons at the Santiago Bernabeu, winning four titles, scoring 104 goals in the process.
A natural finisher for the club, he played 177 games as a striker, leading the line with tenacity, skill and deadly finishing. It’s widely believed that he did well to become such an indispensable player for the club considering his previous problems with potentially devastating injury.
For Brazil, he was equally well-liked – some of his World Cup goals (13 in total) were key to the country’s 2002 triumph where they overcame Germany 2-0 in the final, with “Il Fenomeno” netting both strikes, plus he is their second highest all-time top scorer, behind Pele.
Ronaldo oozed class whenever he wore the national shirt and will go down in history as one of their most outstanding talents. At his peak, he could dribble past the best defences, knew how to produce bamboozling displays of skill and could clip all sorts of finishes past world-class goalkeepers.
A true genius for both Madrid and Brazil.
