Cristiano Ronaldo is confident Manchester United are better equipped to conquer Europe than they were a year ago.

Last season, United agonisingly fell at the penultimate hurdle, hammered by eventual winners AC Milan in the second leg of their semi-final at the San Siro after gaining a slender advantage at Old Trafford.

Sir Alex Ferguson blamed the startling collapse on a threadbare squad, a situation that has now been rectified, leading the Scot to boast his current crop of players is the strongest he has had during 21 years at the club.

"We have a better chance of winning the Champions League than we had last year," Ronaldo said. "We have new players and more players with quality. We have played five games so far and won them all. Everything is in place for us now, so why not? I think we can win it."

Ronaldo score a last minute free-kick to beat Sporting Lisbon last night, his fifth goal in the competition so far this season, which keeps him level with Inter Milan's Zlatan Ibrahimovic as the leading scorer in the competition.

"It is always important to score," he added. "I am working hard to try and better what I achieved last season. My confidence is high and I have five goals in the Champions League already - but I want more."

United are rumoured to be eyeing Sporting's impressive midfielder Miguel Veloso, and Ronaldo was quick to acknowledge his fellow countryman's quality.

"Sporting has produced many good players over the last few years and Veloso is one of them," he said

"He has great quality and he is young. I don't know anything about us trying to sign him but we could end up with quite a lot of Portuguese speakers in the dressing room, which would be very good."

Meanwhile, Tomasz Kuszczak has revealed his Manchester United team-mates rallied round him last night after the blunder that threatened to wreck their 100 per cent Champions League record.

The Polish keeper error allowed Sporting's Abel to curl home an audacious opener.

"It was a bad mistake for their goal," Kuszczak said. "You don't expect that kind of thing to happen. Everyone could see I ran to Ronaldo at the end to thank him, not just for his goal but the fact that we won.

"The lads helped me feel better afterwards. Everyone makes mistakes, the key is to learn from them."

With United's No 1 choice Edwin van der Sar on the brink of signing a one-year contract extension and Ben Foster back in training, Kuszczak's blunder was ill timed.

And he paid tribute to Ronaldo, whose last-minute winner helped to spare his blushes

"Everyone knows what a big player Cristiano is for this club," he said. "To score the winner against his old club like that, in the final minute, was just great.

"That is five wins out of five for us in the Champions League now and we want to keep it going."