Romario – Footballing Genius

This week the great Brazilian Romario finally hung up his boots at the ripe old age of 42.

This mercurial little striker was THE key member of the Brazil side that won the 1994 World Cup in the USA, and is one of the greatest footballing strikers I’ve probably ever seen.

Although he played as a striker, I always thought that Romario was very similar in style to Diego Maradona – his low centre of gravity and deceptive power and speed made him a hell of a difficult man to stop when he had the ball at his feet, and all of that combined with his poetic skill gave you a fantastic all-round football player……….when he was in the mood anyway! He certainly wasn’t an out-and-out centre-forward in the conventional mould.

Another similarity with Maradona. was the way that Romario was able to lead his country to World Cup glory in what was a pretty average Brazil side when compared to previous generations, certainly in terms of the flair and imagination that we’d become accustomed to with teams from that part of the world. Granted they still had some excellent international players like Jorginho, Dunga, Bebeto and Rai in that side, but these guys were more what you would call solid, functional players rather than exciting match-winners like Socrates and Zico had been. Romario was the one man in the side who had the flair of yesteryear and some of the moves he pulled off in that tournament were an absolute joy to watch. He could effortlessly glide past players as if they weren’t there and his finishing had all the arrogance of Socrates’ unique brand of penalty-taking – it was great to watch.

When it came to club football Romario was also highly successful, with possibly his most high profile spell being his time with Catalan giants Barcelona. There he formed a formidable partnership in attack with the great Bulgarian Hristo Stoichkov, and what a double act that turned out to be. Both were explosive characters on and off the field and had their fair share of disagreements, but when they decided to turn up and do what they did best, there were few in the game then to touch them.

I’ll never forget the night that the pair of them completely destroyed Manchester United at the Nou Camp. Even though United’s side wasn’t the strongest it could have been due to the harsh ‘three-foreigners rule’ back then, I really don’t think that their first XI could have done an awful lot with Romario and Stoichkov on that sort of form, and the 4-0 scoreline could have ended up being much more comprehensive than that in the end. A genuine footballing lesson if ever there was one.

Since Romario disappeared off the European football radar some ten or so years ago, he has continued to use his considerable talents to good effect, and his goalscoring record for both club and country is enough to rival even the greatest of players from his homeland, which really is a major accolade in itself. There was even talk of him making a World Cup comeback as recently as Germany 2006 at the age of 40, which tells you a lot about how highly the Brazilian people regard the man.

A genuine footballing legend retired this week….anyone with doubts about that should maybe try taking a quick look on YouTube at some clips of the man in action…….genius!