ESPN predicts: Cristiano Ronaldo will reach 1,000 goals in his career by the end of 2026. Yamal will have to play for another 20 years to catch up.

Ronaldo has currently scored 950 goals. Today, ESPN used data analysis to predict the time it will take for Ronaldo to reach 1,000 goals in his career.

ESPN stated that as long as there are no major injuries, Ronaldo will score his 1,000th goal before the end of 2026, and is most likely to achieve this goal in late November or early December 2026.

C Ronaldo currently has 143 national team goals, 39 goals ahead of Messi on the national team scorer list (note: the actual lead is 29 goals). Almost no one doubts that he can reach another important milestone in the 2026 World Cup: 150 national team goals.

Since his debut in August 2002, Ronaldo has scored 950 goals in 1,293 games, with a career average goal rate of 0.73 goals per game.

Can Harland, Mbappe and Yamal surpass the number of goals that Ronaldo finally achieved in the coming years?

The 18-year-old Yamal has a time advantage, but he only scored 33 goals in 137 games, averaging 0.24 goals per game. To follow Ronaldo's trajectory, he may need to play for another twenty years or more.

Harland (averaging 0.84 goals per game) and Mbappe (averaging 0.74 goals per game) have higher scoring rates than Ronaldo. They have scored 324 goals and 396 goals respectively. But the question is whether these two players are ready to play after the age of 40 to catch up with Ronaldo.

The remarkable thing about Ronaldo is that he is now scoring at an even higher rate than his career average: his last 100 goals for club and country have averaged 0.92 goals per game (per 90 minutes), compared with 0.93 goals per game (per 90 minutes) over the past 50 goals.

Based on the fact that he continues to maintain a high scoring rate for Riyadh Victory and is as reliable as ever for the national team, ESPN's prediction is that Ronaldo is expected to reach the 1,000-goal mark in 13 months, and Ronaldo has approximately 54-64 games to score the next 50 goals.