The Madeira Cliffs

The received version of Cristiano Ronaldo is a trophy count. Five Ballons d'Or, five Champions League titles, the 2016 Euros that gave Portugal its first major trophy, the all-time scoring record in men's international football. Read that way the career explains itself: talent, arriving on schedule. The record is accurate. As an account of the man it explains almost nothing.

Maximiliano Costa's biography takes the same twenty-three years apart. It begins in Funchal, Madeira, where Cristiano Ronaldo dos Santos Aveiro was the fourth and youngest child of a gardener, José Dinis Aveiro, and a cook, Maria Dolores. Andorinha took him at eight. Sporting CP took him at twelve. England took him at eighteen, when Sir Alex Ferguson signed him to Manchester United on August 12, 2003, the night of the Sporting-United friendly at the Estádio José Alvalade, after United's own players had asked their manager to sign him.

What follows is the arc most summaries skip past. The Sporting youth-academy years. Six years at Manchester United, 2003 to 2009, and the 2008 Champions League final at Luzhniki. Nine years at Real Madrid, 2009 to 2018, held against the long rivalry with Lionel Messi. Three years at Juventus, 2018 to 2021. The September 2021 return to Manchester United and the November 2022 Piers Morgan interview that ended it. The Al Nassr signing of December 2022 and the Saudi Pro League years he is still playing as of 2026. Costa gives the off-pitch decades, the Cristiano Jr. and Alana Martina years, the same weight he gives the finals.

The portrait that emerges is of a Madeira-born Portuguese footballer who has played for Sporting, Manchester United, Real Madrid, Juventus and Al Nassr, who holds the all-time international goal-scoring record, and who owns the most-followed personal Instagram account in the world. The numbers are the residue. This book is about what produced them.