Cristiano Ronaldo's dream job? Al-Nassr superstar tipped to only make move into management for one vacancy - and it's NOT Man Utd

At 39 years of age, debate regarding Ronaldo’s intentions when the day comes to hanging up record-setting boots has begun. He will not be retiring any time soon, with it his intention to reach 1,000 career goals, but a move into coaching has been mooted for the five-time Ballon d’Or winner.

Various landing spots have been speculated on, with it suggested that the all-time great may fancy a third spell at Old Trafford. Ex-Red Devils assistant manager Meulensteen is not convinced that a man with enough money in the bank to live several lifetimes in the lap of luxury will want the stress of being a boss.

One position may lure Ronaldo into the dugout, though, with Meulensteen – speaking in association with Mega Dice – telling GOAL when asked about a future in coaching for CR7: "He’s a strong personality, that’s for sure, and opinionated. I’m sure that he has been a big figure in teams as he has grown older. I only know Cristiano when he was coming into the seniors as a young, upcoming, growing player that made a massive impact. There were other leaders in the team, but he has grown to become a leader and lead from the front – scoring important goals and all that.

"Whether he has got that ambition to become a manager, I don’t know. Maybe. Would he like to manage Portugal in the future? I would probably say yes, because he’s so passionate about representing Portugal. I could see him wanting that. Although it is different, international management from club management, you still need to work. Sometimes you can be a man-manager in an international side without having to coach, it’s more about the man-management side if you have good staff around you – they can do lots of stuff. In international football coaching is so limited due to the lack of time that you have got. It could be something that is well suited to him."

Ronaldo remains very much part of the playing squad with Portugal for now, while maintaining impressive individual standards at Saudi Pro League side Al-Nassr. Sir Alex Ferguson’s former right-hand man Meulensteen played a small part in making the Portuguese GOAT what he is today – with a tricky winger being transformed into a fearsome frontman.

Quizzed on whether he ever expected Ronaldo to be chasing down four figures on the goal front, Meulensteen said: "No! I wouldn't have thought 1,000 goals, but it’s a remarkable feat. The one thing that springs to mind for me is, when I started working with him and we had this spell for a number of weeks where we worked together because he was suspended, one of the things we talked about was how many goals he scored and what was he thinking about scoring for the coming season. I think he had scored 23 and I said ‘have you set a new target?’ He said ‘what do you mean?’ Research shows that in sport, people that have clear ambition and know what they want are 90-plus per cent likely to succeed. If you score 23 goals but don’t set yourself a target, then anything that you achieve above the 23 is okay. He said he wanted to score 30. He asked me what I think and I said ‘I think you should go for 40’. He was like ‘that’s almost double’. I told him we hadn’t worked on certain aspects of the game.

"When Cristiano was young he was a player that wanted to do two things – score the winning goal and score the most beautiful goal. I said to him ‘that’s not what it’s all about, what you need to do is to learn and adapt an attitude that you want to score as many goals as you can’. If you score as many goals as you can, the other two goals will be in it anyway. I worked with him on the training ground and said: ‘Work with an imaginary rucksack on your back and every goal you score is a clicker and fills up the rucksack. It doesn’t matter if it’s a finishing exercise, small-sided game, every time you hit the back of the net, it’s a click. The click is self confidence, that you scored a goal that you are going to score in the future. All of the goals you are going to score in the games coming, you have already scored in the training sessions and are all in the rucksack, so when that moment comes, in a split second, you know exactly what you’re going to do because you’ve already done it’. He really bought into that.

"To see him making that transition – at United he scored 43 in that season that I said to score 40 and then had another season and went to Real Madrid. At Real Madrid, because of the make up of the Spanish league it became maybe a bit easier in terms of scoring even more goals. Now, so many years on, and you see him chasing 1,000 goals. He will be chasing them. He wants to score 1,000 goals."

Ronaldo has scored five goals for Sporting, 145 across two spells at United, 450 for Real Madrid, 101 at Juventus and 80 through 89 appearances for Al-Nassr. He has a record-setting haul of 135 for Portugal, while earning 217 caps, and is fast closing in on another landmark achievement that will allow more thought to be given to what happens next.