Cristiano Ronaldo: From dribbler to penalty box assassin

Cristiano Ronaldo is evolving and rather than terrorising opposition defences with his pace and assists, he now concentrates on scoring goals.

His move from Manchester United to the Bernabeu was on the back of his dribbling skills and that is what he also delivered for Real Madrid but now he concentrates on hitting the back of the net so as to maintain a scoring record that has seen him get more than 40 goals in seven of his eight seasons in Spain.

Now he is seven goals short of that target and his form at the moment suggests that he will reach it without difficulty.

Ronaldo now works on doing the minimal in games so as to achieve the maximum and for example in Ipurua he had two touches before getting the opening goal and one to get the second with a header.

He is specialising in getting goals through one touch with 22 of the 33 he has this season coming that way. In other words he is concentrating on interpreting play and getting ahead of defences by thinking quicker.

It is true that Ronaldo does prefer still to receive the ball on the left of the pitch so as to have more space but he likes to end attacks by being in the six-yard box.

Ronaldo’s concentration now, more so than earlier in the season, in shooting with his first tough has seen him near Messi and Suarez in the scoring charts and it has been the case with 14 of his 17 goals since the start of January.

The Portuguese has a scoring percentage of 82.3% with his first touch since January but that is still some way short of the 100% that Hugo Sanchez had with his 38 goals that he got in the 1989-90 season.