The sign has turned up again and again in Al Nassr celebrations this autumn, and the most repeated reading has nothing to do with a name or a slogan. M is the Roman numeral for 1,000, the number Ronaldo is now 15 goals short of.
The Portugal forward sits on 985 career goals at the age of 41. He added his most recent three in Al Nassr’s 5-3 win over Al-Kholood on 29 October, a hat-trick scored between the 66th and 81st minutes and his 67th in senior football.
Ronaldo himself has stayed quiet on what the gesture means. Al Nassr’s chief executive José Semedo has copied it alongside him, which only pushed the theory further, but neither man has confirmed it in public.
A number with few precedents
A four-figure career tally has very few precedents, and all of them are contested. Pelé is widely credited with 1,279 goals across senior football between 1956 and 1977, a total that mixes club friendlies with official matches. Romário has also claimed to have passed 1,000, and historical scorers such as Josef Bican are credited with four-figure tallies when unofficial games are counted. If the count is limited strictly to official matches, no player is confirmed to have reached 1,000.
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Ronaldo has made no secret of wanting to join that very small group. What he has pushed back on is the idea that he thinks of little else.
‘Things have to happen naturally’
Speaking after a win over Al-Diriyah on 9 October took him to 980 official career goals, Ronaldo told reporters he was tired of the running commentary on his tally.
“I’m not going to sit here and say that I have to reach 1,000 goals. If I get there, fantastic,” he said, in comments reported by Yahoo Sports.
He added that the fixation annoyed him, insisting the milestone was not something he could chase on demand. “Things have to happen naturally,” he said in the same remarks, which also included his familiar claim to be the greatest goalscorer in history.
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The maths before year’s end
Hitting 1,000 inside 2026 is a stretch. Al Nassr have a run of Saudi Pro League fixtures through November and December, and Portugal have two Nations League games on the calendar, against Denmark on 14 November and Wales on 17 November. Reaching the mark by New Year’s Eve would require Ronaldo to score at close to 1.15 goals per game for the remaining fixtures on the published schedule, a tempo above anything he has sustained this calendar year.
That leaves early 2027 as the realistic window, and the ‘M’ as the only public hint from anyone close to the player that the number is on his mind.
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