Real Madrid: How Ronaldo made us expect too much from wingers

It has been three years since Cristiano Ronaldo left Real Madrid. It was tough for the fans to let go of the club’s greatest player in history. They had no choice. Cristiano had made his mind, and the fans were scared for the post-Ronaldo era. They didn’t know what the future held, but when they experienced it, they realised a few things. They realised that life without Ronaldo was even harder than they thought it was going to be. The second thing is something I want to talk about, because it really hasn’t been addressed all that often.

The things that Ronaldo did while he was at Real Madrid were other-worldly. It didn’t matter which position he played on, he scored goals left, right and centre. At the end of the day, he was a left-winger. Towards the end of his Real Madrid career, he started playing more and more as a centre-forward alongside Karim Benzema, but before that, he was unstoppable, period.

Cristiano alleviated a Real Madrid fan’s expectations from a winger

What Cristiano did at Real Madrid just exceeded expectations for any winger to ever play for Real Madrid since his departure. We’re talking about a player that would score 40 goals a season and people would say, “Oh, man, he’s declining”. After his departure, I don’t think there’s any winger at the club that has scored 15 goals in a single term. The closest that came to it was Gareth Bale, with 14 in 2018-19.

Ronaldo casually popping in 40 a season made some people think wingers are meant to score A LOT of goals, which isn’t really the case. Historically, 15-20 goals a season from a world-class winger would be labelled a success. Eden Hazard — one of the best wingers in modern football, never scored more than 20 goals a season.

Most Real Madrid fans recognised that, though. But, his exploits meant that the expectations for other wingers would rise a little. Wingers who would score five or 10 goals a season would be considered disappointing, regardless of the quality of said winger.

All of this is not to cut our wingers some slack. They haven’t been good. Their output hasn’t been sufficient and they need to show up and their goal contributions should at least get to double figures. But I just think that Ronaldo’s heroics game in and game out have blurred the difference between a winger and a goalscorer in the eyes of a Real Madrid fan, because he did a lot. He really did.