Former Man United assistant coah, Mike Phelan has said that when Cristiano Ronaldo first arrived at Manchester United in 2003, Ryan Giggs was on free-kicks. But Cristiano took on challenges like nobody else. He always wanted to try something. He wanted to be the guy who found out through trying. He did it every day after training with Giggs and Wayne Rooney. The first challenge was to be better than his team-mates. He rose to that. Once he mastered it, he liked people to be around him watching it and talking about it.
He also insisted on doing it against the best goalkeepers. He wouldn’t have a youth team goalkeeper in nets. He wanted to score against Edwin van der Sar. He spoke to the goalkeepers and asked about their psyche: finding out what they thought and what they found difficult.