Cristiano Ronaldo makes $1billion Real Madrid release clause seem justifiable

Cristiano Ronaldo showed again against Liverpool he is doing what all who saw last season's remarkable feats assumed was inconceivable: he's getting better

Man of the moment: Cristiano Ronaldo (left) dismantled Liverpool            STEVEN GERRARD (RIGHT)

Look closer at the pictures of Cristiano Ronaldo's goal celebration at Anfield and you glimpse a quite astonishing sight. No, not his graceful knee-slide, choreographed perfectly for the lenses around the corner flag, but the expressions on the faces of the Liverpool fans around him.

All of them, to a man, conveying a stunned blankness, with nary a flicker of opprobrium. Only a player on the path to historic greatness can be granted such uniformity of reverence.

Perhaps Jorge Mendes, Ronaldo's agent, was not exaggerating last week when he divulged that the Portuguese phenomenon's release clause at Real Madrid commanded a €1 billion (£790 million) fee, and that the world would not witness a player of his ilk for another 500 years. For Ronaldo is doing what all who savoured last season's feats - 17 goals in the Champions League, and a jaw-dropping 51 from 47 in total - had assumed was inconceivable: he is getting better.

Already Raúl must prepare to cede distinction as the Champions League's top scorer, with 71 goals, to his irrepressible pursuer. Ronaldo already has 10 from this campaign alone, and we are only two-thirds through the group phase.

His 70 overall could quite plausibly become 80 should Real build, as he hopes, upon the catharsis of last season's La Décima with La Undécima, an 11th European Cup, in the final in Berlin next May.