Cristiano Ronaldo wants his son to become the ‘best in football or medicine’, and he’s 10

Cristiano Ronaldo’s ridiculously high standards have seen him stay at the peak of professional football for over 15 years.

He’s won everything there is to win at club level, led Portugal to victory at Euro 2016, and has been handed a shedload of individual awards along the way too. He’s just added another to his collection too – being named ‘Player of the Century’ at Dubai’s Globe Soccer Awards.

That’s not counting the last 100 years, just the last 20, btw. So one fifth of a century, or 20% of a century. Not an entire century, because we’re 20 years into the 2000s. But still, a century.

It was open to public vote, with Mohamed Salah getting the third biggest share and Barcelona legend Xavi (who was quite good this century if we are in fact calling the last 20 years a century) getting precisely 0%.

The big names turned up for the lavish ceremony nevertheless, with Robert Lewandowski handed the ‘Player of the Year’ and the likes of Gerard Pique, Iker Casillas and Gianni Infantino making appearances.

Ronaldo really caught the attention in his acceptance speech, though, when he was asked about his aspirations for his son (also called Cristiano, but you already knew that) and what he’d like to see him achieve as he grows up.

“We’ll see if my son will become a great footballer,” he said, via Football Italia. “Sometimes he drinks coke and eats crisps and it irritates me. He knows that.”

Good parenting, to be fair. Junk foods and sugars are no good for anyone. But he didn’t stop there.

“Sometimes I tell my son to take a dip in cold water to recover after a run on the treadmill and he says: ‘Dad, it’s so cold there.’

“That’s fine, he is only 10 years old. I always tell him that it takes work and dedication to have success.

“I won’t pressure him to become a footballer, but I would like it,” he added. “The most important thing is to become the best in his field, whether it is football or medicine. I always tell him that it takes work and dedication to have success.”

So that’s football, then, following in dad’s footsteps, or medicine. Two fairly simple career paths for a ten-year-old to succeed in…

Cristiano Jr. has a pretty good chance of making a success of himself, though, with one of the game’s greatest ever guiding him through life. He’s started pretty well in football too, joining the Juventus youth setup in 2018 and inheriting his father’s knack for scoring goals rather quickly.

Maybe one day Cristiano Jr. will win a Golden Foot award too, which his dad won the other day. It’s literally a model of Ronaldo’s actual foot, but in solid gold.

What an act to follow, kid!