Cristiano Ronaldo voted Premier League’s greatest

Cristiano Ronaldo got an early birthday present yesterday as the former Manchester United star was voted the greatest player to have graced the Premier League.

A survey conducted by Usurv showed Ronaldo, who turns 30 today, was the people’s choice, finishing ahead of Thierry Henry and Ryan Giggs, who joined him on the fantasy podium.

Ronaldo was brought to Old Trafford by 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, and as the reigning FIFA world player of the year.

The Portuguese forward’s extraordinary success has continued unabated in Spain, following what was at the time a record £80 million (€106.5m) 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.

Ronaldo’s 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, Henry, 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% share once the fence-sitters and contrarians are removed from the calculations.

Next in line was Arsenal favourite Henry, with 18% of support, followed by Ronaldo’s former team-mate Giggs — the most decorated player in the league — on 13%.

French maverick Cantona, the key on-field figure in establishing the Red Devils as the Premier League’s early dominant force, took a 12% share, as did the division’s record goalscorer Shearer.

Assistant Ireland manager Keane, who sneered at prawn sandwiches and brought both brawn and brain to Ferguson’s best teams, might be unimpressed by his 2% haul of votes, but he still edged out old Arsenal foe Vieira who took a 1% slice.

When it came to gender differences, Ronaldo ruled the roost for both men and women.

Shearer found considerably more support with women voters (16%) than with men (9%), while the opposite was true for Henry.

The Frenchman who brought va-va-voom into the footballing lexicon was the preferred choice of 20% of men, but just 15% of women.