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Cristiano Ronaldo Has Gone Two Years Without Scoring A Free-Kick In Club Football

Cristiano Ronaldo Has Gone Two Years Without Scoring A Free-Kick In Club Football

He's renowned for his free-kick ability but he's not scored one at club level for a long time.

Daniel Marland

Daniel Marland

Cristiano Ronaldo has gone over two years without scoring a free-kick in club football.

The Juventus forward is renown for his free-kick technique and has scored plenty in his career.

However, hehasn't scored a single club free-kick since his move to Turin and his last one came for Real Madrid.

The Spanish side were taking on Gremio in the Club World Cup and the game was locked at 0-0.

But in typical fashion, the 34-year-old stepped up and swerved a ball over the wall and into the net to give 'Los Blancos' the lead.

Since then however, the clinical technique has dried up.

To put into context, it's 748 days, 17,952 hours and 1,077,120 minutes since the strike against Gremio.

The Portugal captain has managed to score two for his country in that time, with the one against Spain at the 2018 World Cup being the stand out.

He was very close to breaking his duct in the Champions League until Aaron Ramsey intervened.

It's interesting that he's still the top man when it comes to taking free-kicks for the Serie A champions.

Juventus have other great dead ball specialists in their side such as Paulo Dybala and Miralem Pjanić but it's Ronaldo with the responsibility still.

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PA

Boss Maurizio Sarri addressed the situation earlier this season and said he would leave set-pieces to his player's discretion.

Speaking in a press conference back in October, the Italian said per ESPN:

"The free kicks? We have two right-footed options on the pitch: him [Pjanic] and Ronaldo. So they will have to decide among themselves who takes them, as happens in just about any other side."

Meanwhile, his longtime rival Lionel Messi seems to go from strength to strength.

2019 saw the Barcelona man score a variety of dazzling free-kicks in the Champions League as well as La Liga.


It'll irk Ronaldo that his trademark is now attributed to Messi, who has scored 18 free-kicks for Barcelona since Ronaldo's last one at club level.

Who do you think is the best free-kick taker in the world right now?

Sound off in the comments below.

Featured Image Credit:

Topics:Β Football, Juventus, Cristiano Ronaldo, Real Madrid

Daniel is a journalist for SPORTbible and he has previous experience with Manchester United. He has spoken to some of the biggest names in sport including Rio Ferdinand, Peter Crouch, WWE COO Triple H and WWE legend The Undertaker. May or may not do a decent impression of Jamie Carragher.

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@DanMarland_