Cristiano Ronaldo scored twice for Portugal against Uzbekistan on Tuesday 23 June, aged 41 years and 138 days, becoming the first player in history to score at six different World Cups 1. Portugal won 5-0 in Houston before a crowd of 68,777. Ronaldo is the Portugal captain; his goals at 6' and 39' took him to 10 World Cup goals, passing Eusebio's nine to become Portugal's all-time leading scorer at the tournament.
The brace also made Ronaldo the oldest man to score a multi-goal World Cup match, beating a mark Lionel Messi had set only four days before . Messi reached 18 World Cup goals on Monday, the most by anyone across the men's and women's games. The two arrived at the same World Cup for the first time since 2022 , and, by the draw and their ages, almost certainly the last. They will not play each other. Each keeps breaking the record the other has just set: Messi by volume, Ronaldo by endurance, in parallel columns rather than head to head.
The match carried a 20-year echo. Fabio Cannavaro, who captained Italy to the 2006 title, now coaches Uzbekistan and stood on the opposite touchline 2. The Video Assistant Referee (VAR), the pitchside review system, disallowed an Uzbekistan goal by Abbosbek Ganiev for a foul on Joao Cancelo. Asked afterwards about the comparison that has framed his career, Ronaldo said he was "not interested in talking about Messi" 3. He had answered the only way that still settles anything between them, with a goal at an age no forward has reached before .
