I see myself as the best footballer in the world

This line is very widely and consistently credited to Cristiano Ronaldo, and the sentiment is squarely his own — bold, unhesitating self-belief is a documented hallmark of how he has spoken throughout his career, from his boyhood ambition on Madeira to become the best footballer on the planet to his repeated public declarations of confidence. However, we could not trace the exact wording to any primary source. Ronaldo has authored no books, speech collections, or published letters — the volumes bearing his name are biographies written by others — and the sentence does not appear in the speech transcripts or reprints we examined; it circulates almost exclusively on quotation-aggregator sites that supply no original interview, date, or publication. We therefore record it as authentically attributed to Ronaldo in spirit and in broad consensus, while noting that no verifiable original occasion has been located.