Thursday 5th February 2015 0:00
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Cristiano Ronaldo has been voted as the greatest player to have graced the Premier League.
Ronaldo spent just six years in English football but as he celebrates his 30th birthday on Thursday the former Manchester United star was named the people's choice in an online poll.
He was brought to Old Trafford by Sir Alex Ferguson as a raw 18-year-old in 2003, and departed for Real Madrid in 2009 with three Premier League titles, a Champions League winners' medal and an FA Cup.
He won the first of his three FIFA world player of the year awards in 2008 before departing England and the Portuguese forward's extraordinary success has continued unabated in Spain, following what was at the time a record £80m transfer.
Ronaldo has plundered goals and broken records at a breathtaking rate and developed a keen rivalry with Barcelona's Lionel Messi, the pair now firmly established as the leading two players of their era.
His talent was fine-tuned at United, where he scored 118 goals in 292 appearances, fully justifying his early billing as 'the new George Best'.
In an online poll of 1,000 members of the public, the choice offered was between Ronaldo, Thierry Henry, Ryan Giggs and fellow luminaries Eric Cantona, Gianfranco Zola, Dennis Bergkamp, Steven Gerrard, Alan Shearer, Roy Keane and Patrick Vieira.
Marginally over a quarter of those surveyed chose an 11th option - specified as 'other/don't know'.
Ronaldo snared 177 of the 747 votes cast for one of the chosen star names, a 24 per cent share once the fence-sitters and contrarians are removed from the calculations.
Next in line was Arsenal favourite Henry, with 18 per cent of support, followed by Ronaldo's former team-mate Giggs - the most decorated player in the league - on 13 per cent.
French maverick Cantona, the key on-field figure in establishing the Red Devils as the Premier League's early dominant force, took a 12 per cent share, as did the division's record goalscorer Shearer.
Keane, who sneered at prawn sandwiches and brought both brawn and brain to Ferguson's best teams, might be unimpressed by his two per cent haul of votes, but he still edged out old Arsenal foe Vieira who took a one per cent slice.
via TEAMtalk | Manchester Utd http://ift.tt/1Kt7HTN
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