Ronaldinho: Barcelona legend was star of first YouTube video to hit 1 mil views | OneFootball

On February 14, 2005, YouTube was launched by Steve Chen, Chad Hurley, and Jawed Karim.

Fast forward 17 years and the platform is now the second most visited website in the world and has more than a billion users every month.

Ronaldinho, arguably the most entertaining footballer of all-time, is a major reason why YouTube is as big as it is today.

The Brazilian magician was the star in the first ever video to reach one million views on the platform.

Ronaldinho teamed up with Nike for one of the most memorable adverts in football history.

The video features Ronaldinho, who was at Barcelona at the time, showing off his incredible ball control.

Ronaldinho made a complete mockery of the ‘crossbar challenge’ during the advert.

He did some keepie uppies on the edge of the box before smashing the ball at the crossbar. The ball then rebounds back to him and he continues to juggle the ball.

It was extremely impressive… but there’s more.

Ronaldinho then repeated the process three more times. Yes, he smashed the ball at the crossbar three more times and the ball didn’t bounce once.

It’s a truly iconic video and you can relive it below…

The video was originally posted on to YouTube by Nike on October 21, 2005. 10 days later, it became the most viewed video on the platform, a reign which would last 70 days.

It was later removed but in 2015 was re-posted by Nike and has amassed just shy of six million views.

There has been much debate over the past 17 years as to whether the video is fake or not.

Truthfully, we don’t know the answer. It does seem too good to be true.

But if there’s one player history capable of such brilliance, then it’s surely Ronaldinho.

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