Look closer at the pictures of Cristiano Ronaldo's goal celebration at Anfield and you glimpse a quite astonishing sight. No, not his graceful knee-slide, choreographed perfectly for the lenses around the corner flag, but the expressions on the faces of the Liverpool fans around him.
All of them, to a man, conveying a stunned blankness, with nary a flicker of opprobrium. Only a player on the path to historic greatness can be granted such uniformity of reverence.
Perhaps Jorge Mendes, Ronaldo's agent, was not exaggerating last week when he divulged that the Portuguese phenomenon's release clause at Real Madrid commanded a €1 billion (£790 million) fee, and that the world would not witness a player of his ilk for another 500 years. For Ronaldo is doing what all who savoured last season's feats - 17 goals in the Champions League, and a jaw-dropping 51 from 47 in total - had assumed was inconceivable: he is getting better.
Already Raúl must prepare to cede distinction as the Champions League's top scorer, with 71 goals, to his irrepressible pursuer. Ronaldo already has 10 from this campaign alone, and we are only two-thirds through the group phase.
His 70 overall could quite plausibly become 80 should Real build, as he hopes, upon the catharsis of last season's La Décima with La Undécima, an 11th European Cup, in the final in Berlin next May.
As he departed the Anfield stage with 20 minutes remaining, he was saluted by Liverpool supporters with a rare gusto. A former Manchester United player, lavished with applause? It is worth capturing such a moment and packaging it up inside a time capsule.
For his feats, and in particular that delicious dinked finish from James Rodríguez's wonderfully measured pass, had been one to set their own travails in galling perspective. After all, Liverpool have a meagre 17 goals to show for their entire campaign so far. Ronaldo, on his own, has 20.
Infographic: Ronaldo's incredible scoring record at Real & United
Mario Balotelli versus CR7: why was it dressed up as even a contest? The gulf in talent made the contrast painful to observe: the carthorse versus the wonderhorse. The only category where they are remotely comparable is in shots at goal. A table compiled across Europe's top five leagues reflects that Ronaldo has taken more than any, with the Italian second on the list. Ronaldo, as befitting the lethal marksmanship with which he chipped the ball beyond Simon Mignolet, has 15 league goals to show for it. Balotelli? None.
Thus did a match billed as the return to Anfield of unmissable European theatre became the most peculiar exhibition experience. Thousands of Kopites had arrived daring to expect that the confrontation could be close and left thoroughly disabused of such a fancy, uniting instead under the banner of the Ronaldo appreciation society.
Ronaldo told me last month, in an interview in Madrid, that he would strive to eclipse all his records this season. "I know it's tough, but I'm going to try," he said. Then, given that he was still struggling to shake off the effects of a troublesome knee injury, the quest sounded outlandish. On the basis of the past four weeks, it is eminently achievable.
A hat-trick at Deportivo, four against Elche, another three to help humiliate Athletic Bilbao, two at Levante: he is carving an unprecedented swathe through Spain, a one-man wrecking ball administering destruction with uncommon elegance. It is easy to forget that over the same period, he has also thrown in a winner against Denmark for Portugal, as well as his first ever goal at Anfield.
Infographic: Ronaldo on the verge of Champions League history
No wonder he looks so unruffled about the supposed pressure of overhauling Raúl's Champions League landmark. He could, as he acknowledged after his Liverpool masterclass, always do so in the next game. Besides, he has plenty of other priorities, not least that of channelling his luminescent form into Saturday's Clásico. Ronaldo, as he demonstrated throughout his career, is never so content or so potent as when he feels loved, and the acclaim still ringing in his ears from the fans in red should leave him in just such a mood.
There are so many ways of articulating Ronaldo's global supremacy, from last season's Ballon d'Or award to the fact that he has now scored in a remarkable 20 different cities in the Champions League. Indeed, we might come to regard that Ballon d'Or, when the emotion poured out of him on the Zurich stage, as a watershed. In another generation, he could have snaffled such an accolade much sooner, without a certain Lionel Messi intervening. At 29, finally rid of the burden of wanting to win the individual award that mattered to him most, he looks like a man making up for lost time.
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