Cristiano Ronaldo Made A Lionel Messi Bet With Real Madrid Teammates In 2017/18

Cristiano Ronaldo made a bet that he would score more goals than Lionel Messi in the 2017/18 campaign but the Portuguese superstar's supreme confidence didn't quite pay off.

Ronaldo started this particular season very poorly by his lofty standards and only found the net once in his first eight La Liga games.

Messi raced ahead in the goalscoring charts and scored 11 in his first eight fixtures - including hat-tricks in hammerings of Espanyol and Eibar.

Yet according to MARCA, Ronaldo was still adamant he would finish on more goals than his rivals and told his teammates as much.

After failing to get on the scoresheet in the 3-0 win over Las Palmas on 5 November, Ronaldo is said to have bet that he would take home the Pichichi trophy - basically La Liga's version of the Golden Boot.

He did then start banging in the goals and by the time March 2018 rolled around it was much closer, with Messi only three ahead of Ronaldo.

Messi pulled away though and ended up finishing the season on 34 goals - eight better off than Ronaldo.

In all competitions, Messi struck 45 times, with Ronaldo just one behind on 44 after hitting a staggering 15 goals in the Champions League.

Real finished third in a La Liga title race won by Ernesto Valverde's Barca, but went all the way in Europe and beat Liverpool 3-1 in the final in Kiev to win a third Champions League in a row.

Ronaldo, having won the Champions League for the fifth time, decided to leave Los Blancos for Juventus in a £99 million deal at the end of the term.

The five-time Ballon d'Or winner didn't win the aforementioned bet but he did win a wager with Sir Alex Ferguson years before in the 2006/07 season.

He had a £400 bet with his manager involving his Premier League goals tally.

Fergie would get the money if Ronaldo didn't score 15 goals in the league, while Ronaldo would get a tidy payment as well as some serious bragging rights.

Ronaldo notched goal number fifteen from the spot in a 4-0 thrashing of Spurs at White Hart Lane and Ferguson joked that "penalties don't count" when asked about it afterwards.