At a glance
- Since Cristiano Ronaldo’s departure in 2018, Real Madrid has only surpassed 70 league goals by Matchday 33 once in eight seasons.
- During the CR7 era, scoring fewer than 80 goals at this stage of La Liga was never an issue — it was the floor, not the ceiling.
- Despite deploying Benzema, Vinícius, Rodrygo and Mbappé, Madrid has not come close to matching that historic attacking output.
Cristiano Ronaldo’s goals set a standard Real Madrid has never recaptured
A single statistic, aired on Cadena SER’s El Larguero on April 27, has cut through the noise of the Spanish football debate and landed with uncomfortable precision. Journalist Antón Meana stated plainly that during the Cristiano Ronaldo era, Real Madrid never finished Matchday 33 of LaLiga with fewer than 80 goals. In the eight seasons since the Portuguese forward left the Bernabéu, the club has crossed the 70-goal mark at the same point in the season exactly once.
It is the kind of claim that sounds like hyperbole – until you check the numbers.
The verified record of the Cristiano Era
Between 2009 and 2018, Real Madrid under Cristiano Ronaldo did not merely score heavily. They did so with a consistency that made the 80-goal threshold by Matchday 33 look routine. Under José Mourinho‘s tactically obsessive setup and later under Carlo Ancelotti’s more expansive system, Madrid regularly approached or exceeded 100 league goals across a full campaign by this point in the calendar. Ronaldo himself was contributing somewhere between 30 and 40 league goals per season, almost as a personal guarantee of the collective output.
No other player in the modern game was performing that function. The goals were not a product of favourable fixtures or statistical noise – they were a structural reality of how the team was built and how Ronaldo operated within it.
What the post-Cristiano numbers in goals actually show
Meana’s claim holds up to scrutiny. The verified goal tallies by Matchday 33 in the seasons following Ronaldo’s departure to Juventus tell a consistent story. In 2018/19, Madrid managed 59 goals to that point. The following season brought 61. By 2020/21 the figure had reached 67, and in 2021/22 it stood at 69. Only in 2023/24 did the club finally clear the 70-goal barrier – and even then, by a single goal.
The verdict is unambiguous: the claim is accurate, and the drop-off is not a blip. It is a structural shift in how Real Madrid score.
Why Cristiano Ronaldo’s goals have proven impossible to replace
What makes this data striking is not simply the absence of Ronaldo – it is what has been present since he left. Real Madrid have not been short of attacking talent in the intervening years. Karim Benzema reached the peak of his career during this period, winning the Ballon d’Or in 2022 and carrying the team’s attack with intelligence and craft. Vinicius Jr emerged as one of the most dangerous wide forwards in world football. Rodrygo added a clinical edge from midfield positions. And for the last two seasons, Kylian Mbappé – perhaps the most anticipated signing in Madrid’s modern history – has been in the starting line-up.
None of it, individually or collectively, has moved the needle back to where it was when Cristiano Ronaldo was on the pitch.
A different kind of football, a different kind of Madrid
Part of what the statistics reveal is a genuine philosophical evolution in how Real Madrid operate. The club have not simply lost goals – they have changed their identity. Where the Ronaldo-era Madrid overwhelmed opponents through relentless attacking volume, the post-2018 version has been built around defensive solidity, elite transitions, and the ability to win tight games through moments of individual brilliance rather than cumulative pressure.
This has not prevented success. League titles and Champions League trophies have continued to arrive at the Bernabéu. The argument that a team needs 100 league goals to be considered dominant has been quietly dismantled.
The statistical shadow that will not lift
And yet the debate sparked by Meana’s broadcast is not really about whether Real Madrid are a good team. It is about what the club once represented at their most terrifying – and what it would take to get back there. Goals and Cristiano Ronaldo remain inseparable in the club’s recent history, and that is precisely what makes the comparison so persistent.
Nearly a decade on, the numbers still tell the same story. No one has filled the space he left. The goals have not returned. The shadow, for now, remains.
