Ronaldo is 15 goals from a number nobody's touched

Ronaldo turns 985 career goals and a thousand suddenly doesn't look far away at all. Three more in Saudi Arabia means he's now scoring at the kind of rate that makes the milestone feel less like a question of if and more a question of when.

Al-Nassr needed every one of them in a game that finished 5-3, the kind of open, chaotic scoreline that suggests nobody out there fancied a clean sheet. Ronaldo did his job three times over and, at 41, is still the man his team hands the ball to when it matters.

The number that's actually within reach

985 to 1,000 is 15 goals. For most strikers that's half a season, maybe more. For Ronaldo, who has spent the last few years treating the Saudi Pro League like a personal goal-scoring exhibition, it could be a matter of weeks if this kind of form holds.

No player in the recognised history of the men's game has scored 1,000 competitive goals. Ronaldo's tally includes club and international football across his entire career, and depending on how you count it, he's either already closer to that line than anyone else ever has been, or about to be the first to cross it outright.

Still doing it at the top level

What's notable isn't just the hat-trick, it's that it's a hat-trick. Not a tap-in here and a penalty there over a month, but three goals in one match against a side sitting in the same league table he's meant to be dominating by reputation alone. Al-Kholood aren't pushovers in the Saudi top flight this season, and Ronaldo still took them apart.

His move to Al-Nassr was framed by plenty as a wind-down, a lucrative final stop before retirement. Instead he's kept scoring at a rate that would be notable at a European giant, let alone in a league some still dismiss as a retirement home for ageing stars.

What's left to prove

Fifteen goals stands between Ronaldo and a figure that would put him somewhere entirely alone in the record books. Al-Nassr's fixture list over the coming weeks will tell us how quickly he gets there, but on this evidence, the countdown is very much on.