Cristiano Ronaldo: How powerful are Man Utd star's shots? | OneFootball

Cristiano Ronaldo can kick a football pretty darn hard.

The Manchester United star is revered for many things in the beautiful game and you can rest assured that his ability to unleash incredibly powerful strikes is one of them.

Besides, say what you like about his free-kick accuracy since leaving Real Madrid, but it's fair to say that you'd be a bag of nerves if you were asked to stand in front of one of his venomous shots.

Ronaldo's powerful strikes

However, it's hard to know exactly how powerful Ronaldo's strikes really are because speed data on goals are few and far between with the odd recordings proving disputed and speculative.

As such, any suggestions of how Ronaldo's power might compare to, say, Roberto Carlos or Ronald Koeman are ultimately based upon the eye test of some of his goals looking outrageously quick.

Well, at least that's what you'd think, because there is at least one recording of Ronaldo's shot power that might not only be reliable, but could actually be historic.

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Ronaldo's 'Tested to the Limit' shot

Viewers of Sky Sports around the start of the last decade might remember the documentary 'Ronaldo: Tested to the Limit,' that ran a series of fascinating experiments on the Portuguese star.

From racing against a professional sprinter to scoring goal in pitch-black darkness, Ronaldo really did live up to his reputation as football's ultimate machine.

However, one of the tests that has largely been forgotten since the documentary went live was the one in which Ronaldo was tasked with firing a free-kick as hard as possible into panes of glass.

The result was pretty astonishing with Ronaldo unleashing a thunderbolt that smashed three of the windows and prompted one of the scientists to say: "80mph. Pure, unadulterated speed."

Wait... what's the world record?

'Eighty miles per hour' you say? Well, that really is a significant number when you look at the Guinness World record for the 'Fastest Football Kick'.

According to their official website, the record is currently held by Francisco Javier Galan Marin with a strike that clocked at 129 kilometres per hour (80.1mph) at the El Show de los Récords studios.

Yup, that's right. It really makes you want to dive back into the 'Test to the Limit' documentary and shake the scientist to ask what the potential decimal place was for Ronaldo's shot into glass.

Now, of course, we don't know how exactly Guinness test their world record and therefore, there's potential that the test with Ronaldo might not have been in keeping with their practices.

And it's almost impossible to tell whether the recording equipment in the documentary would be up to the standards of whatever was used by Guinness to give the award to its current holder.

As such, even in a world where the scientist declared that Ronaldo had struck the ball at 80.5mph, we sadly wouldn't be able to declare him as the footballer with the most powerful strike in history.

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When did Cristiano Ronaldo make his debut for Manchester United?

2002 2003 2005 2007

But the sheer fact that he might, maybe, have unofficially broke the record is remarkable enough.

ENTER GIVEAWAY

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