I was just scrolling through random YT videos this popped out among recomendations…
At first I just skipped it… But than I thought 250?! Can’t be true! They surely added his junior goals or something like that (as Pele does)… Had to check his stats on Wikipedia and I was blown away. God damn.
I mean, we all know about him, I knew he was scoring goals, his famous CL final goal… But never thought he was close to these numbers. Then saw this video… Damn, that shooting ability is just insane. Video game stuff. That CL final goal was just the tip of the iceberg.
Amazing player.
To my understanding he was a midfielder at PSV and a sweeper with license to drift forward at Barce. He did score a shedload of pens at Barce also tbf. Still an absolute special legendary player and I wish Barce beat Milan in '94
Can’t look at him without think about Graham Taylor saying ‘I do not like Orange’
Barcelona Wembley European cup for the first time.
Brilliant game of football that the cavemen English press labelled boring. That goal and a very special moment in the game. Cruyff legacy underlined.
I know roughly the role of a libero/sweeper was close to a modern day defensive midfielder/box to box, at least they’d turn into those at times… Guys like Mathaus, Sammer etc… But still, even with that, his numbers are immense.
Beautiful to watch and I remember the Maradona comparisons. He had a weird career though. Moves from River to Valencia at the age of 21. Stays a season and a half. Moves to Sampdoria, stays for a season. Moves to Parma, stays for a season and moves back to River for 2 seasons before moving to Turkey. All for fairly big money (for the time) moves by the looks of it. Apparently he took training sessions off because he was hung over, so maybe that explains it somewhat.
There’s not enough short lower centre of gravity players these days. Part of the reason I’d like Buendia
Honestly him and batistuta in that fiorentina team is just the stuff of dreams. I don’t care what you say, you don’t get that kind of football anywhere anymore.
Definitely top 3 10-20 yard passers of all time, amazing at splitting defences and probably top 10 passers in general in history. The fact it took arguably Milan’s 5th best ever player to displace him from the starting lineup shows you how good he was, I even remember wondering at first why we needed Kaka when Rui Costa was already so good.
Pirlo higher up the pitch, with a lot more grace and class.
We did the same as them.
We won it and the following season lost in the final.
I wonder, if we had beaten Zaragoza, Graham would have still been sacked.
Interesting question my fellow old schoolers and @Gio , did Parma underperform in terms of achievements at the time with the squad they had or was it just a case Serie A was just that stacked? I also ask this because Milan and Juventus had the monopoly over the titles despite the agreed competitiveness.
That XI would probably walk all over the XI’s of today.
I remember on Football Italia they reckoned they were being ‘more serious’ after shifting Asprilla and Zola. Both were 10s and they seemed to think the pair played pretty football but it wasn’t that effective. They went onto sign Crespo and he and Battistuta had an argument in the press over several seasons about who should be Argentinas number 9.
They were stacked but look at milan and juventus at the time, you’re still picking those two teams over that Parma team really, inter also as well really…but yeah no league has ever had such a strong level of amazing teams all at once for about 5-10 years like serie a did back then.
Also a lot of those players became household names at other teams once signed from Parma, so on paper you look at their squad and think wow, but really not many of those players were world beaters til Thuram, canna, crespo, Buffon moved to their next clubs. They were still brilliant of course but not the top 5 in their positions they would develop into.
Funny thing is there’s more analysis. More recruitment of youngsters all around the world. Bigger squads. Better training techniques and pitches. More protection for players and just look at what the sport has left.
There’s about 8 teams who get talked about in Europe now and we talk about 4 players in their 30s in the top 6 players in the world and maybe 6 managers with any real credentials on the big stage.
It’s a pretty sorry state of affairs that it’s come to a pale imitation of almost anything you see in this thread.
