Cristiano Ronaldo has gone from a winger to a number nine during his career, and Jose Mourinho has explained why he made the switch in a Copa del Rey final.
Ronaldo burst onto the scene at Sporting and Manchester United as a winger, dribbling past opposition defenders with pace and skill and beating them time after time.
Eventually the Juventus forward evolved into a more central striker and became even more lethal in front of goal, which has put him on the brink of breaking the international goalscoring record.
While the five-time Ballon d'Or winner playing as a number nine seems pretty obvious to us now, it took Mourinho a stroke of genius to pull it off.
The 'Special One' surprised many by naming Ronaldo in the number nine position in the 2011 Copa del Rey final, despite Karim Benzema, Gonzalo Higuain and Emmanuel Adebayor being on the bench.
It paid off, with the Portugal star scoring the only goal of the game in extra time, and Mourinho revealed exactly why he did it, in 'The Playbook', a Netflix documentary.
"The first time that Ronaldo played in the position of a number nine was in the Cup final against Barcelona," said Ronaldo first.
"We had three number nines and for the final game, I turned down all three to play with Cristiano as number nine. Because in this match, Barcelona had Dani Alves right back".
"Ronaldo had problems against Alves and I decided. You [Ronaldo] will play as number nine, you will play in the center, you will only try to score goals."
"He scored the winning goal, an incredible header and we won the Cup," concluded the Special One.
Mourinho's move turned out to be genius, as Ronaldo has scored 465 goals since the 2010/11 season and became Real Madrid's top scorer at that time. /Telegraph/
