Didier Drogba was an absolute handful, Thierry Henry was fantastic but Cristiano Ronaldo magic left my players stunned

Tony Pulis says Cristiano Ronaldo was the toughest opponent he faced and recalled his Stoke side being left in utter disbelief.

Pulis enjoyed a 30-year spell as a manager and was in charge of the Potters for ten seasons, guiding them to Premier League promotion in 2008.

Stoke's first season gave him a real taste of who's who in world football from John Terry to Cesc Fabregas, Didier Drogba and Fernando Torres.

One player who really shone was Ronaldo, who ended the 2008/09 season with the Ballon d'Or and 18 league goals to his name and Pulis got a taste of his quality during his side's 5-0 defeat at the Theatre of Dreams.

And Pulis was quick to name the Al Nassr forward as his toughest.

"If you look at the forwards we played against in that time, there’s some outstanding players at all the top clubs. I can remember going to Old Trafford, the team was doing really well at the time.

"I think Dean Whitehead missed a great chance about ten minutes before the end of the first-half and we looked comfortable. Then all of a sudden, Ronaldo got the ball, I think he took the free-kick and smashed it into the top corner.

"With about 30 seconds to go [until full-time], he hits another one. We go in [at half-time] 2-0 down having really, really competed really well.

"Then you walk into the dressing room and you’ve got these players there who were working their absolute socks off for 45 minutes, looking at one another thinking, ‘What have we got to do?’"

Pulis also gave honourable mentions to Drogba and Thierry Henry, who are club legends for Chelsea and Arsenal respectively and scored a combined 279 Premier League goals.

"You could go through the Arsenal team and you go through Chelsea’s team at the time, Drogba was an absolute handful, Henry and people like that, they were just absolutely fantastic players."

Luckily for Pulis, he only had to face Ronaldo on one more occasion during his career, with Stoke losing the reverse fixture in that same season 1-0 before United's star left for Real Madrid in the summer.

He was also certainly aware of the other immense quality he came up against during the rest of his Potters spell, as well as his later stints at Crystal Palace and West Brom.

"When you look at the top, the team that Chelsea had, United’s team and then later on in my career obviously the Man City team, they were just absolutely fabulous players.

"You try and mark someone out of the game and lose a player yourself, we never did it.

"We just made sure we knew what we were doing individually and collectively as a team. I can’t remember really doing anything different for anybody, they were all top, top players."