“I’m very happy, that the team won, which was what we wanted, to continue a path that we have been taking in recent years and in recent games. Of course, reaching 100 and then 101 goals, with two goals, makes me very happy”, he explained, in an interview after the match.

On the day he completed his 165th international ‘AA’, the 35-year-old Portuguese captain opened the scoring in the 45th minute, with the exemplary execution of a direct free-kick, and scored his second in the 72nd minute, with a great shot from outside the area.

The striker secured the victory in the second round of Group 3 of the competition whose first edition Portugal won, after recovering from a problem in his right toe that kept him from taking part in the game against Croatia which saw Portugal win convincingly 4-1.

“The problem I had on one toe was recoverable. I like being on the national team and in this group, and I knew that the team, in the first game, was going to perform well, regardless of whether I was there or not. The squad is too good and nobody is indispensable. I feel good, I scored two important goals and I hit the mark I wanted, of the 100 goals”, he said.

Cristiano Ronaldo, who became only the second player in history to reach 100 goals for a team, is closer to the absolute record of 109, currently held by Ali Daei’s, which has stood for 51 years.

Despite the proximity of these numbers to the Portuguese striker, this record “is not an obsession” for Ronaldo, not least because “the records appear in a natural way”.

He added that he doesn’t care “about provocations”, after being confronted with stories in the Swedish press that the Portuguese team plays better without him.

To play without an audience, due to the Covid-19 pandemic, “is sad”, but “it is what it is”. “Health comes first,” the Juventus star said.

The public, he said, is “part of the joy of the spectacle” of football, and he hopes that “in a few months it will be possible to have people in the stadium”, not least because not having an audience in the stands “is like going to the circus and not seeing clowns, or going to a garden and not seeing flowers”.