How many hat-tricks has Cristiano Ronaldo scored?
The Portuguese struck yet another treble to help Manchester United beat Tottenham 3-2
Cristiano Ronaldo loves nothing more than scoring a hat-trick and he was able to celebrate yet another career treble to power Manchester United to a 3-2 win over Tottenham on Saturday.
After marvelling at the latest in a very long line of hat-tricks, FourFourTwo decided to crunch the numbers.
How many hat-tricks has Cristiano Ronaldo scored?
Ronaldo's glut of goals against Tottenham brought up his 59th professional hat-trick for club and country.
How many hat-tricks has he scored for Manchester United?
Today's was only Ronaldo's second treble for the Red Devils. His first came in the fifth season of his first spell at the club, in a 6-0 drubbing at home to Newcastle in the Premier League in January 2008.
That was also his first professional hat-trick. The first of many.
How many hat-tricks did he get at Real Madrid?
As Ronaldo spent the majority of his career at Real Madrid and enjoyed his best years there, it should be no surprise that most of his hat-tricks came for Los Blancos.
He netted 44 hat-tricks in nine seasons in the Spanish capital on his way to becoming the club's all-time top scorer with 450 goals.
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And how about Juventus?
While Ronaldo scored 101 goals for Juve, he only managed three hat-tricks in his three seasons with the Old Lady, two in Serie A and one in the Champions League.
Curiously, both his league hat-tricks came against Cagliari, while he also landed a treble against Atletico Madrid, a familiar foe from his time in Spain.
What about with Portugal?
Ronaldo has scored a record 10 hat-tricks for Portugal.
Last October he hit three goals against Luxembourg to become the first player ever to reach double figures for hat-tricks in international football.
Who are his favourite victims?
Ronaldo has scored trebles against a number of teams more than once.
But spare a thought for Sevilla, against whom he has scored no fewer than five hat-tricks, all of which came in La Liga.
A special mention also for Atletico, who were four-times the victims of Ronaldo hat-tricks.
Three of those came for Real Madrid, one in a Champions League semi-final, while the other came for Juventus in a last-16 tie in Europe's top competition. On both occasions, it was Ronaldo's side who progressed.
Has anyone scored more hat-tricks than Ronaldo?
As a matter of fact, yes. But don't tell the man.
Ronaldo has more hat-tricks than any other active player, followed closely by Lionel Messi's 55.
But he's very far from being the player with the most hat-tricks of all time.
Pele is the player with the most hat-tricks according to the Guinness Book of Records.
The Brazil great scored 92 hat-tricks spanning 20 years.
And then there's the late German striker Erwin Helmchen, who according to Wikipedia is in fact the highest scorer of all time.
He apparently scored 141 hat-tricks but most of them came in German's lower leagues or regional divisions, meaning they don't really compare with Cristiano or Pele's records.
Plus, he never played an official game for Germany.
Richard Martin is an experienced football writer, editor and social media producer. Before returning to London, he spent 10 years in Spain as a football correspondent and has attended over 600 games across 16 countries, his favourite being Argentina. He has also worked for Reuters, The Telegraph, The Daily Mail, The Times and AS.