words Cristiano Ronaldo has printed on his boots for every football match

Cristiano Ronaldo.

It's surely only a matter of time before Cristiano Ronaldo opens his goalscoring account for Real Madrid in La Liga.

Seven games into the new season and the Portuguese still hasn't found the back of the net, although he has only featured three times.

It was expected he would end his drought against Espanyol over the weekend, but he didn't, instead providing a lovely assist for Isco, who scored both goals in the 2-0 win.

Following the game, a rather embarrassing statistic was unearthed about Ronaldo's struggles on the goalscoring front.

According to Opta, Ronaldo has attempted more shots (22) without scoring than any other player in La Liga this season.

Worse still is only four of the 32-years-old's attempts have found the target, not to mention that his rival, Lionel Messi, has already bagged 11 league goals.

Any suggestions that Ronaldo is tired were quelled by Zinedine Zidane after the Espanyol win, with the Real boss insisting that it won't be long before he gets off the mark.

"It is not that [Ronaldo] is tired, just the opposite - he was out for a lot of games,"said Zidane.

"We are a bit disappointed for him as he has not yet scored in La Liga, but this is football. His assist for Isco was phenomenal. I hope things change in the next game."

Ronaldo missed Real's opening four league games through suspension after receiving a red card against Barcelona in the Spanish Super Cup.

He scored a stunning goal against the Blaugrana in the first leg, so perhaps it will require a similar piece of magic to finally score in La Liga.

Despite the forward's poor start to the new campaign, he is hot favourite to land the Ballon d'Or in December, which would take his tally to five - level with Messi.

Ronaldo's journey from an exciting teenager to one of football's greatest ever players has been nothing short of sensational, but he remains humble and never forgets where he came from.

And if proof was needed of that, it's been revealed that Ronaldo has the same four words printed onto the heel of his boots for every football match and reads them before playing.

And they are: "El sueno del nino," which translates to: "Dream of a child."

This is according to Ronaldo himself, who explained to Rio Ferdinand in a recent interview (see below at 4:12) why he has those four words etched onto his new CR7 diamond boots.

"It [means]: Dream of a kid. It was my dream to play here, for this club," said Ronaldo. "It's good because I'm part of the history and part of the boot."