Ronaldo wins top prize at inaugural Best FIFA Football Awards

Ronaldo has further cemented his place as the leading player on the planet.

Cristiano Ronaldo further cemented his place as the leading player on the planet after scooping the top prize at the inaugural Best FIFA Football Awards tonight.

Ronaldo's success in Zurich followed on from his triumph in last month's Ballon d'Or awards as he once again pipped rival Lionel Messi to the game's top individual honours.

The 31-year-old clinched both awards on the back of a phenomenal 2016 during which he scored 55 goals for club and country, while helping Portugal win the European Championship and Real Madrid lift the Champions League and FIFA Club World Cup.

Cristiano Ronaldo Junior holds the trophy his father Cristiano Ronaldo won for The Best FIFA Men's Player award as they pose for a photo with Ronaldo's girlfriend Georgina Rodriguez, second left, and his mother Maria Dolores dos Santos Aveiro, right, and others. Ennio Leanza/Keystone via AP

It is the latest chapter in a fairytale story that some Manchester United players will believe they saw the dawning of at first hand one summer night in Portugal some 13 years ago.

The date was August 7, 2003 and the Red Devils were playing a friendly to open the Alvalade XXI Stadium - they lost the match 3-1 to Sporting Lisbon but the day will forever be remembered for Ronaldo announcing himself to the world.

The slight 18-year-old danced his way past United's defence, which had won the Premier League crown the season just gone, to the extent that the players told Alex Ferguson that a deal must be done to take him to England.

The fable goes that Ferguson told them the deal had been done during the match and Ronaldo would soon be sporting the club's famous number seven shirt in front of 67,000 on his United debut as a substitute against Bolton.

Ferguson said after signing the young Ronaldo: ''After we played Sporting last week the lads in the dressing room talked about him constantly, and on the plane back from the game they urged me to sign him - that's how highly they rated him. He is one of the most exciting young players I've ever seen.''

The United players knew. But could they know just how good, how great, how determined Ronaldo would become to be considered amongst the best of all time?

Now in his thirties, Ronaldo is one of the most recognised people in the world, he has his own clothing line, his own feature film, his own brand.

But winning still matters more than anything to the Real Madrid forward, who shot United to three Premier League titles and a Champions League crown as he matured from a teenager guilty of constant step-overs, going to ground too easily and histrionics into a man good enough to carry a team on his shoulders when required.

He would depart United in 2009 a hero and go on to rack up more medals, more goalscoring records and more individual honours in Spain.

Achievements with his beloved Portugal were harder to come by, though, Ronaldo arriving as he did as the stars of the country's so-called Golden Generation were burning out.

It was left to him to lead teams not bursting with world-class stars or an abundance of talent and he helped take them close; semi-final defeats in the World Cup of 2006 and Euro 2008 and the galling loss on home soil to outsiders Greece in the final of Euro 2004.

However, he finally got the international glory he would have been desperate for last summer when he captained Portugal to victory at Euro 2016 - their first major trophy.

He was forced off in the final against France with a knee injury, trying his hardest to stay on and crying uncontrollably with the realisation he could not, such was the importance of the occasion to him.

But the way he came back out - bellowing instructions and encouraging his compatriots from the sideline, giving a rousing speech before extra-time began and celebrating with them after Eder's superb strike had settled the contest in Portugal's favour - showed he also knew what it meant to his country.

He finally got to lift a trophy on the international stage, something which has still eluded Argentina ace Messi, Ronaldo's long-time rival for the honour of being the best player in the world.

And the newly-crowned Best FIFA Football Award winner is far from finished. He will be 33 at the time of the next World Cup and is likely to still be the figurehead for club and country that he has been for the last decade. More success seems certain for a man who is so determined to grasp it.