5 ways Cristiano Ronaldo can prolong his career at the top

#4 Become a target man

Ronaldo's evolving game could help him to last longer at the top

One way that Ronaldo could prolong his career at the top may have already begun last season – CR7’s reinvention as a target man rather than a free-roaming attacker.

When he burst onto the scene at Manchester United back in the early 00’s, Ronaldo was more of a winger than anything else, deploying his explosive pace and dribbling skills to awesome effect as he rose to the top of the game.

And with his move to Real, he changed again, becoming a free-roaming attacker, drifting inside from the wings and still using that dribbling skill to score an insane amount of goals.

Now, though, his speed has slowed down, his dribbling skills are no longer as effective as they were before, and Ronaldo can’t keep up the kind of pace that he once did for over 90 minutes. Last season then saw Ronaldo re-invent himself as a target man, a hitman in the box more comparable to someone like Robert Lewandowski or Luis Suarez than his older self.

Sure, he didn’t score quite as many goals last season – 37 compared to hitting over 40 in his previous seasons – but that’s still an impressive return, and he’s continuing to develop himself in the position too, as we saw with his hat-tricks last against Bayern Munich and Atletico Madrid.

And with his insane vertical leap, he’s also become a master of headed goals too, akin to someone like Alvaro Morata or Andy Carroll.

By changing his position – some would say even restricting his game – he’s actually stopping himself from running himself into the ground like he would’ve done by keeping the free-roaming role.

If this evolution continues, and Ronaldo becomes purely a dangerous in-box predator, then he may be able to stay at the very top for a while yet.