For a guy whose deeds are so often defined by numbers, whether it’s the fact that he has more goals than games for Real Madrid or the fact that nobody has more Ballon d’Or awards stashed away in his trophy cabinet, there was one that seemed out of sync before this World Cup began: three, as in the number of goals that Cristiano Ronaldo had scored in the World Cup to date.
Yet he remedied that perceived dearth against Spain Friday, nabbing a hat-trick in a 3-3 draw to open their World Cup campaign. The first was a penalty he won himself, his nifty stopover prompting Nacho to dangle a leg over which Ronaldo gleefully fell. The second was a gift from David De Gea, who pushed his edge-of-the-box snap shot over the goal line, though again, there’s something to be said for Ronaldo’s alertness on the break that he was there to capitalize on Goncalo Guedes’ layoff following Pepe’s defensive clearance. The third was a magisterial free kick that disappeared into the top corner, leaving De Gea flat-footed.
Ronaldo joins Miroslav Klose, Uwe Seeler and Pele as the only players who have scored in four World Cups. He also becomes the oldest player to score a hat-trick in World Cup history, at 33 years and 131 days. And he equals the legendary Ferenc Puskas, the most prolific European-born international goalscorer in history and the second most-prolific overall. (Iran’s Ali Daei, at 109, may not be entirely out of his reach either.)