Cristiano Ronaldo: Is he a team player or does he play for himself?

“He is playing rubbish. Don’t pass him the ball bro, on my mum’s life. He is playing against us,” Cristiano Ronaldo’s former Real Madrid teammate Karim Benzema was discovered influencing Ferland Mendy to not pass the ball to his peer Vinicius Jr with these cajoling words, or so was reported by MARCA back in October 2020. Has Cristiano Ronaldo even been caught on camera talking like that about not passing the ball to a teammate or, as it can be put, being disrespectful to a fellow colleague on the pitch? Perhaps not!

Yet, he remains the one to be publicly criticised for what he does on the pitch — scoring goals. Born and brought up in Funchal, Ronaldo belonged to a moderately poor and humble background. We’ve all heard the stories of the financial difficulties in his childhood, where his dreams had somewhat succumbed to poverty.

We all know of his journey from the youth ranks of Andorinha — the club where his father would work as the kit man — to winning his first Ballon d’Or for Manchester United and breaking records after records en route to becoming one of the best players in the world.

It has been such a fascinating but gruelling journey for the person widely known as “CR7”. He has not only established himself as a talismanic figure in football, but as an inspiration and idol to many for other than footballing reasons.

And then, you wake up one day to find out someone, who has never shared the pitch with Cristiano Ronaldo, babbling against the Portuguese phenomenon and making allegations of the player playing for his individual cause and not for his team. What are we talking about here?

I don’t know how many of you have noticed, but a former Juventus midfielder in Domenico Marocchino appeared on TMW Radio a few days ago to discuss Juventus’ preparation ahead of the 2021/22 season (don’t forget to check our Serie A predictions here!). On the show, the former Bianconeri, who had made around a ton of appearances for the Turin-based club and won two Scudetti for them, was told to voice his thoughts on Juve’s current forward line.

As quoted by Tuttomercatoweb, Marocchino said,

"“Juventus does not have the classic striker. Ronaldo is not, he plays for himself not for the team. The zone defense then allowed many players to play for a long time, even over 30 years.”"

Make whatever you want of this statement, but the sharp dig at Ronaldo is obvious. With that being said, we are not here to criticize Marocchino for addressing his feelings. Every man has his own opinion and the right to make that public. He believes in that statement. Then, he should stick by that. For us, the time has come to assess whether Ronaldo is a team or plays only for himself.

Is Cristiano Ronaldo a team player or does he play only for himself?

Scoring 29 goals from 33 appearances in the 2020/21 Serie A season, Ronaldo captured the celebrated Capocannoniere. As far as the tally of his assists is concerned, he only registered two, which takes us back to the prevalent question — does he really play for himself, for him to score more goals and set more new records?

Assisting has never been his cup of tea. Since FBref.com started collecting the data of Cristiano Ronaldo on their website, the most number of league assists that he pocketed in a single season was 16, which came for Real Madrid in the 2014-2015 campaign. In that season, he went on to amass 48 goals from 35 La Liga appearances — yes, 48 freaking goals in a single season!

The second-highest on the list is 12, then 11, and 10. And they all came while Ronaldo was plying his trade for Los Blancos and savouring the finest times of his career. Other than these four occasions, he has never surpassed the number ten when we put his league assists under the microscope.

Since joining Juventus from the Spanish capital, Ronaldo has bagged eight, five and two assists to his name over the last three seasons in Serie A respectively. Does this suggest that he has grown self-centred over the last few years? We don’t have enough data to support that theory, of course.

While the stats show that he still is a skilled and effective dribbler, ageing may be considered a factor regarding the lack of assists that the forward has garnered in recent years. Now 36, Ronaldo has become more isolated within and around the box over the years. Using his natural instinct of getting into the right place at the right time, he strives to maximise his potential to score goals these days.

What else can you expect from a player nearing 40? There is a parameter called shot-creating actions, which is used to gauge a player’s involvement in creating a shot. The stats from FBref.com display, Ronaldo, over the last 365 days, has recorded the shot-crating actions of 3.66, which is among the best across the top five domestic leagues in Europe.

Still, at the age of 36, he scores goals for Juventus week in, week out. In fact, he is too precise at doing that. Juventus might not have secured their Champions League place last season from a top-four finish hadn’t Ronaldo’s scoring boots ticked and scored 29 goals in Serie A.

The same blatant Benzema, speaking to Canal+ this time (via AS), once stated:

"“Cristiano and I get on well and I like playing with him. He likes to play it first time. He is more egotistical than me but that’s normal, it doesn’t bother me. In the end, it’s good for the team.”"

Have you come to any consensus yet? If not, we are then unfortunately on the same train, mate!