Old adversaries Cristiano Ronaldo and Jose Mourinho will meet on Tuesday when Juventus visit Manchester United in the Champions League.
The five-time Ballon d’Or winner has spent time working under his countryman at Real Madrid, but when he has been forced to come up against him in competitive action he has not shown the type of form that has seen him score at a rate of almost one goal per game for the duration of his career.
He is seeking to score his first Champions League goal for Juve after making a summer move from Los Blancos. Indeed, his debut in the competition for the seven-time Serie A defending champions ended embarrassingly as he was sent off for pulling the hair of Jeison Murillo, which resulted in a one-match ban.
If he were to net against Mourinho, however, it would be something of a rarity. Although he has faced his compatriot on 14 previous occasions, he has found the net against him only once.
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Ronaldo’s first match against Mourinho came when both were still in Portugal. The attacker was on the books of Sporting CP, while Mou was still in charge of Porto. Twice they met in this set up and twice it was Mourinho who took the honours, with the youngster failing to net.
The miserable run CR7 endured at the hands of Mourinho continued even when he moved to Manchester United in 2003. The Red Devils were hot favourites to overcome Porto in the Champions League quarter-finals of 2003-04, but a late goal for the Portuguese club from Costinha at Old Trafford sent them through and their coach infamously charging down the touchline to celebrate with his team.
It took until the manager had moved to Chelsea in order to gain a modicum of success in the rivalry, with Ronaldo’s assist for Darren Fletcher the springboard to a victory at Old Trafford in 2005.
Throughout Jose’s first spell in the Premier League, he continued to get the better of the attacker, though when the manager moved to Inter, Ronaldo finally earned his first goal against one of his sides, heading home in a 2009 Champions League last-16 clash for the Red Devils.
Since then, the pair have rarely met, spending a three-year period together at Santiago Bernabeu, during which the forward notched 60 goals during the 2011-12 season – his second most prolific campaign ever.
Indeed, Ronaldo has only once previously faced Mourinho’s United, and even that was for a mere seven-minute cameo in a 2-1 victory for Real Madrid in the 2017 UEFA Super Cup.
Tuesday’s game, therefore, promises to be the rebirth of a rivalry largely dormant for nine years.
What is Ronaldo's scoring record vs Man United?
Ronaldo has faced his former club competitively on three separate occasions while at Real Madrid, with two of the meetings occurring during the last-16 stage of the Champions League in 2013 and the other during the UEFA Super Cup final in 2017.
While the Portugal international possesses a dismal scoring record against Mourinho, he obviously sports a fairly decent one when he played under him – having scored two goals against United with Madrid during both legs of the Champions League round of 16 tie in February and March of 2013.
The striker netted to equalise for Madrid in the first leg at the Santiago Bernabeu to level the score 1-1, and again found the back of the net later in the away leg at Old Trafford in the 2-1 victory.
Ronaldo's goals dumped United out of the Champions League that season as they won 3-2 on aggregate, with Los Blancos eventually making it to the semi-final stage before crashing out at the hands of Borussia Dortmund.
Ronaldo failed to score in his final appearance for Madrid against United in 2017, when the two sides met in the UEFA Super Cup Final in Skopje, though the La Liga side edged the victory thanks to goals from Casemiro and Isco.
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