Ronaldo Targets 1,000 Goals, Extends Portugal Career — SkimNews
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- Ronaldo considered retiring from international football after the 2026 World Cup but decided to extend his Portugal career, saying he will stop "when I feel like I'm not doing anything here."
- Ronaldo will earn his 234th cap starting against Wales on Thursday in a Nations League fixture at Lisbon's Jose Alvalade Stadium, the ground of his first club Sporting.
- The 41-year-old Al-Nassr forward has scored 979 goals for club and country and called reaching 1,000 in a Portugal shirt "a beautiful story," rejecting the label of obsession.
- Portuguese newspaper A Bola ran a readers' poll ahead of the Wales match in which Ronaldo failed to make the selected starting XI; he accused unnamed TV channels of "dying for me not to come to the national team anymore."
- Craig Bellamy, Wales manager, called the 1,000-goal target "silly" but said Ronaldo's name "will go down in history for hundreds and hundreds of years."
Why it matters: Ronaldo's continuation keeps his 146 international goals available to Portugal for at least the next tournament cycle, but the A Bola readers' poll that omitted him from the XI shows the domestic goodwill he can no longer take for granted.
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