Cristiano Ronaldo’s remarkable ever-present Champions League record

Cristiano Ronaldo has played Champions League football at some stage of the competition in every single season of his senior career, a remarkable feat that began in 2002 when he first played for Sporting CP in a qualifier at the age of just 17.

Since joining Manchester United aged 18 in 2003, Ronaldo has played in at least the Champions League group stage every year. What’s more, there has only been one occasion in all that time that he hasn’t made it to the knockout stages.

Ronaldo has become synonymous with the Champions League over the years. His five titles is a record for a single player in the post-1992 era, having won it once with Manchester United and four times with Real Madrid. He is only one shy of the all-time European Cup record held by Paco Gento, who won six with Los Blancos during the 1950s and into the 1960s.

It was actually in the Champions League that Ronaldo made his senior debut in professional football, appearing as a substitute for Sporting CP in a third qualifying round tie against Inter in August 2002.

The 17-year-old winger from Madeira, who had left his island home to join the club’s youth ranks five years earlier in 1997, played just over half an hour of the 0-0 draw in Lisbon. Ronaldo was left out of the return leg in Milan and Inter won 2-0 to progress, although he did feature in both legs of a consolatory UEFA Cup tie against Partizan Belgrade the following month, which Sporting also lost.

That represents the only time in a glittering career that Ronaldo has ever played in Europe’s second tier club competition and he has been exclusively a Champions League player ever since.

Having played in a qualifier for Sporting, an 18-year-old Ronaldo made his group stage debut after his move to England in 2003, playing the full 90 minutes of a surprise loss to Stuttgart. It was Ronaldo who won the penalty for United’s consolation goal in the 2-1 defeat that night.

He played five times in the Champions League that season, making further starts against Rangers and Panathinaikos and coming off the bench in both legs of the last 16 tie against Porto.

Ronaldo became an increasingly important player for United over the following seasons as he began to both physically mature and fine tune his technique. He was a regular starter in the 2004/05 Champions League campaign, although United’s shock group stage elimination in 2005/06 is the only time since his Sporting days that he has been part of a team knocked out before Christmas.

Ronaldo is now the Champions League’s all-time top scorer with over 130 goals in the competition, but it actually wasn’t until April 2007 that he got his first. He had been waiting since that first foray with Sporting in 2002 and then scored twice in a famous 7-1 United thrashing of Roma.

The player went on to win his first Champions League title in 2008 when United beat Chelsea in a closely fought final – Ronaldo actually missed his penalty in the shootout, having scored in normal time. He played a further final in 2009, prior to a world record £80m transfer to Real Madrid.

Ronaldo helped make Real a force in Europe once more. Prior to his arrival, Los Blancos had been knocked out at the last 16 stage for five seasons in a row. There was one more last 16 exit in 2009/10 with Ronaldo on board, but Real then reached at least the Champions League semi-finals for the next eight seasons and lifted the trophy on four occasions in that time.

Ronaldo has remained a Champions League ever-present since his transfer to Juventus in 2018, although he has not enjoyed the level of success as he did before.

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