
THE ROAD TO GLORY OF
CRISTIANO RONALDO
EARLY LIFE
Cristiano Ronaldo dos Santos Aveiro was born on February 5, 1985 in Funchal, the capital of the Portuguese island of Madeira, in the So Pedro parish. He was raised in the adjacent Santo António parish. He is the youngest and fourth child of cook Maria Dolores dos Santos Viveiros da Aveiro and part-time kit man José Dinis Aveiro. His father's great-grandmother, Isabel da Piedade, was from the Cape Verdean island of So Vicente. He has two older sisters, Elma and Liliana Cátia "Katia," as well as one older brother, Hugo. Due to her financial situation, his father's drunkenness, and the fact that she already had too many children, the boy's mother admitted that she wanted to abort him but her doctor would not conduct the procedure. Ronaldo was up in a poor Catholic Christian environment where he and all of his siblings shared a room.

Due to her financial situation, his father's drunkenness, and the fact that she already had too many children, the boy's mother admitted that she wanted to abort him but her doctor would not conduct the procedure. Ronaldo was up in a poor Catholic Christian environment where he and all of his siblings shared a room.
​
Ronaldo spent two years with Nacional after playing for Andorinha as a youngster from 1992 to 1995, where his father served as the kit man. When he was 12 years old, he underwent a three-day trial with Sporting CP, who then bought him for £1,500. Then, to join Sporting's youth academy, he relocated from Madeira to Alcochete, a town close to Lisbon.

Ronaldo decided to stop attending school with his mother at the age of 14 in order to focus solely on football since he thought he could play semi-professionally. He didn't finish school past the sixth grade due to his difficult life as a student and the fact that he lived in the Lisbon area, far from his Madeiran relatives. He had been dismissed from school despite being well-liked by his peers because he had thrown a chair at his teacher because, in his words, she had "disrespected" him. He was identified as having tachycardia a year later, a condition that might have required him to give up football. During Ronaldo's heart operation, a laser was utilized to combine several cardiac channels into one, changing his resting heart rate.
​
After the procedure, he was released from the hospital, and a few days later, he started training again.
