Cristiano Ronaldo reveals how many kids he wants in order to match his shirt number

He plays as a forward for Spanish club Real Madrid and the Portugal national team, but the number seven isn't just Cristiano Ronaldo's lucky number on the pitch.

The 32-year-old football player – often regarded by many as the greatest of all time – has just welcomed twins Eva and Mateo with a surrogate and is expecting his fourth child with girlfriend Georgina Rodriguez. He also has a 7-year-old son named after himself, also by a surrogate.

And the star seems to be wanting to create a football team for himself as he recently revealed that he is planning to take his tally of children to seven – at Cristiano Jnr's suggestion.

The proud dad admitted that his eldest son wants six siblings, which will correlate with the football star's CR7 fashion brand named after his initials and his football shirt number.

He made the comments during a Chinese TV interview that was picked up by Portuguese newspapers.

Portuguese daily Correio da Manha quoted Cristiano as saying: "Cristiano is very happy. He's doing well and says he wants more brothers and sisters. He wants seven, the magic number, and I think that's good."

He also added that he is "enjoying the moment" as a father of three children and was ruling nothing out when it came to expanding his brood.

Cristiano delighted his 107m Instagram followers to no end on 29 June when he shared a snap with his newborn twins, captioning the shot: "So happy to be able to hold the two new loves of my life ❤"

The snap has gained over 8m likes and thousands of congratulatory comments. He posted another picture of the twins with son Cristiano Jnr on 4 July, writing alongside it: "Blessed".

The footballer – who was born in Funchal, Madeira, and grew up in the Funchal parish of Santo Antonio, has made headlines for his dysfunctional personal life along with his footballing achievements.

He was arrested on suspicion of raping a woman in a London hotel and released on bail in 2005 and shocked the world with the surprise birth of his eldest son in 2010. His high-profile romance with supermodel Irina Shayk also garnered much press attention.

He reportedly met the Russian model through their Armani Exchange campaigns and they appeared together on the May 2014 cover of Vogue's Spanish edition. They subsequently split up in January 2015 and the footballer has been in a relationship with Madrid-based model Rodriguez since November 2016.

Despite the media fixation on Cristiano's private life, he was named the best Portugese player of all time by the Portuguese Football Federation in 2015 and made his senior international debut in August 2003 at the age of 18 – taking the world by storm. He is Portugal's most capped player of all time with over 130 caps and their all-time top goalscorer, participating in seven major tournaments.

Cristiano is one of the most marketable sportsmen and was ranked the world's highest-paid athlete by Forbes in 2016 and 2017.