A decade of goals and still hungry

World and European Player of the Year Ronaldo has bad news for defenders. He cannot see the day he wants to hang up his boots.

The 26-year-old Brazil striker celebrated his 10 years as a professional footballer on Saturday with a two-goal display against Valencia that put Real Madrid one point behind leaders Real Sociedad in the Spanish championship.

And he said on his personal website Monday he was looking forward to a long future.

Ronaldo was just 16 years old when he made his debut for Rio De Janeiro side Cruzeiro in the Brazilian championship on May 25, 1993.

He moved to Dutch club PSV Eindhoven the following season, where he first began to make his mark on the world stage.

He had a brilliant season after joining Barcelona in 1996, scoring 34 goals in the Spanish league, but surprised many by deciding to decamp to Italy's Inter Milan a year later.

After five injury-plagued seasons with the Serie A club he made a sparkling return to fitness by firing Brazil to victory in last year's World Cup before his controversial 45 million euro (53.13 million dollars) transfer to Real Madrid.

He was nicknamed Ronaldinho then and in 10 years has become soccer's best player.

"It brings back very strong emotions to think of my debut with Cruzeiro when I was only 16," he said.

"Ten years have passed since then, but so much has happened to me that it seems like 20. I just want to thank everyone who has made me feel happy playing football during the past 10 years

"I hope I will have a long future ahead," he said.

And as long as he is happy playing he plans to carry on terrorising defences.

"I have still got a big future ahead of me," Ronaldo said. "And I am planning on playing football for as long as I continue to enjoy it."

It was a Ronaldo hat-trick that knocked Manchester United out of the Champions League but an injury prevented him from getting to grips with the Italians defenders when Juventus eliminated the European holders in the semi-finals.

Ronaldo said after passing his personal target of 25 goals for the season that his main goal was to help Real to the Spanish title.

"It's more important to win the league than to score 25 goals," said Ronaldo, who now has 26 goals to his name since joining from Inter Milan.

Nineteen of the goals have come in the league, six in the Champions League and one in the final of the Intercontinental Cup.

After finishing top scorer with eight goals in the World Cup finals where he took Brazil to a record fifth title, Ronaldo joined Real from Inter in September and arrived in Spain out of shape.

But he took less than a minute to score on his Real Madrid debut, against Alaves on October 6, and added a second goal in a 5-2 win.

Ronaldo told reporters he wanted to reach the 30-goal mark, but Roy Makaay of Deportivo La Coruna already seems to have wrapped up the top scorer's award, with 27 goals after Saturday's matches.