- 2 days ago
Brilliant beginners and super starters: we reckon these are football's best debuts ever.
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00:00As I was aggressively informed by my girlfriend's father when I turned up to meet him in a t-shirt
00:04that ironically read World's Greatest Love Machine, first impressions count. In fact,
00:10you can likely mask over an entire lifetime of mediocrity if you just get off on the right foot.
00:15The beauty of football, of course, is that the right foot can literally be your right foot,
00:18and using it to make some vital contributions to your team's fortunes before those in the stands
00:22even fully know your name can see you idolised for years to come. I'm Adam Cleary, this is 442,
00:28and these are the 10 greatest debuts in football history.
00:32Number 10, Ronaldo, Real Madrid 2002. 61 seconds, that's all it took for Ronaldo to get off the
00:39mark in the white of Real Madrid. If you started listening to Frank Sinatra's My Way when he comes
00:43on to replace Javier Portillo in the 64th minute, the big man's not even had regrets and a few of
00:48them by the time Ronaldo's lashed the ball past the Alaves goalkeeper. Not content there though,
00:53he later gleefully receives a pass from Steve McManaman of all people for a second,
00:56Maka hilariously asking for the ball back after playing him in, before then missing a fairly
01:01easy chance to notch a hat-trick. A miss, by the way, he has always asserted was deliberate so as
01:05to not set the bar too high for the rest of the season. Very clever.
01:09Number 9, Sergio Aguero, Manchester City 2011.
01:13Two goals and an assist for Sergio Aguero, I don't find that tall impressive.
01:18Yeah, alright, fair enough, there were months-long spells during Aguero's time at City where it did
01:22sort of feel like he was doing that every single game. But what if I was to tell you that this
01:26particular haul came despite him not even muddying his boots until the 59th minute?
01:31Eh, yeah, see, pretty good. In a dazzling half-hour cameo, he arrived on the end of a
01:35Mika Richards cross for a tap-in, played a blind head-height back pass for David Silva to score
01:40and then just leathered one in from fully 30 yards.
01:44Number 8, Alan Shearer, Southampton, 1988.
01:47A handy reminder to anyone who needs it that football wasn't invented in 1992 here as the
01:51Premier League's record goalscorer was already banging them in four years before it even launched.
01:57Making his way through Southampton's academy, the Saints saw enough talent in a rosy-cheeked
02:0117-year-old Alan Shearer to give him a full debut against high-flying Arsenal, themselves
02:06some eight games unbeaten.
02:08What followed were three goals that absolutely scream late 80s British football and come from
02:13a combined distance of about five very muddy yards.
02:16This did also make him the youngest ever scorer of a hat-trick in the English top flight and
02:20that is a record that, much like his statue outside St. James' Park, will likely be standing
02:25for a very long time.
02:26Number 7, Zinedine Zidane, France, 1994.
02:29Now, if you ever want to discuss the greatest possible contrast between someone's first
02:34and last appearance for a club, Zinedine Zidane's France career is probably where that
02:38conversation both starts and ends.
02:4018 years before he'd head down the tunnel at the World Cup final with sorrow in his heart
02:44and Marco Matarazzi's necklace imprinted on his forehead, Zizou arrived off the bench
02:49with his country 2-0 down to the Czechs.
02:51Immediately looking like someone's much older brother deciding to bully a game in the playground,
02:55he weaved his way through three players before burying an unstoppable 30-yarder with five minutes
03:00to go.
03:01Not two minutes later, he left a clear foot and a half above everyone else in the box to
03:06score a header you would struggle to replicate with a stepladder.
03:08A great cameo, thought French football fans, but still surely not enough for him to take
03:12captain Eric Cantona's place in the team.
03:15Not unless, I don't know, in the next few months he was about to dive boots first into
03:19the crowd at Selhurst Park after being sent off against Crystal Palace and receive an enormous
03:23domestic and international football ban, but that's not going to happen.
03:27Number 6, Fabrizio Ravinelli, Middlesbrough, 1996.
03:31Yeah, so Middlesbrough in the mid-1990s feels more like a fever dream than it does actual
03:36footballing history. Returning them to the Premier League, Brian Robson decided that the
03:40best approach was to bring in some of the most creative, expressive players in world
03:44football to a part of the country famous for drowning a chicken cutlet and cheese sauce
03:49and 80% of its buildings being made out of corrugated metal.
03:52And apologies to any Middlesbrough fans who might take issue with that, I personally really
03:55like a Palmo, but I'm also crucially not scoring double figures in Serie A and getting
04:00modelling contracts off Dior.
04:01And the crazy thing is, this policy did actually work for precisely one game.
04:07Joining Samba stars like Giannino, Emerson and Robbie Musto was Italian goal scorer Fabrizio
04:13Ravinelli who promptly scored a hat-trick against the mighty Liverpool.
04:17Despite them being fourth at one stage, the results then spectacularly fell off a cliff and
04:21Borough were promptly relegated back whence they came.
04:24Oh well, it was worth a shot.
04:25Number 5, Gianluigi Buffon, Parma, 1995.
04:28You see, great debuts aren't all about scoring goals unless, well, you know, that's your
04:33job and Gianluigi Buffon announced himself on the big stage with a shutout for the ages.
04:39Barely 17 years old and only 4 years after converting from an outfield player in the club's
04:43academy, he was thrown into the deep end against Carlo Ancelotti's all-conquering Milan side.
04:49The game somehow finished completely goalless thanks to Buffon repeatedly frustrating Roberto
04:54Baggio, Marco Simeone and Ali Dyer's cousin George Weyer.
04:58He might have made over 1,000 plus competitive appearances after this and won every single
05:03accolade worth winning, but he'll never have forgotten his first.
05:07Number 4, Zlatan Ibrahimović, LA Galaxy 2018.
05:11Now what can be said about Zlatan Ibrahimović's US debut and indeed his entire career that hasn't
05:17already been said by the man himself about himself.
05:223-1 down.
05:23At home in the Los Angeles derby which is apparently a thing, on comes the great one and MLS is
05:29changed forever.
05:31Two minutes in and his presence alone is enough to allow Galici to pull one back, but the equaliser
05:35could not possibly have been more Zlatan if the ball had been covered in bad tattoos and
05:41started referring to itself in the third person.
05:43There's only one Zlatan.
05:44A volley 40 yards from goal had sailed both into the net and into the history books with
05:50the same level of vim.
05:52His second arrived in suitably dramatic fashion with the game having ticked into injury time
05:56he somehow outjumped two defenders and the goalkeeper to nod in the most dramatic of winners.
06:02You wanted Zlatan he said in the press conference, I gave you Zlatan.
06:07Number 3, Wayne Rooney, Manchester United 2004.
06:10It's a tale as old as time, a once in a generation talent bursts onto the scene with his hometown
06:15team, secures a big money move to one of the biggest clubs in the world, but the step-up
06:19is initially slightly too much for them.
06:22Not Wayne Rooney though, Wayne Rooney absolutely took the piss.
06:26Noping out of David Moyes Everton for a pricely 27 million, he arrived at Old Trafford still
06:31just 18 years old and promptly put Fenerbahce's head down the toilet.
06:35Two goals in the first half, the second a delightful Long Ranger were capped off with a brilliant
06:40free kick before his Manchester United career was even one hour old.
06:44And yeah, okay, he looks like he owns a failing chain of chip shops now, but that night in
06:482004, no other player in world football looked more exciting.
06:52None.
06:53Number 2, Erling Haaland, Borussia Dortmund 2020.
06:56Getting two goals against West Ham in his proper Manchester City debut because nobody
07:00counts the Community Shield was an impressive start for Erling Haaland.
07:03But it was nothing, nothing compared to his arrival at Dortmund.
07:07With 55 minutes gone, his team's title challenge looked in tatters as they trailed 3-1 to Augsburg.
07:13They threw Haaland on and within three minutes he'd halved the deficit with a great strike
07:18from a narrow angle.
07:1911 minutes after that and following an equaliser from Jadon Sancho, he raced through with Thorgan
07:24Hazard for a neat tap-in.
07:26Nine minutes after that he burst clear of the defence doing that big, weird, gangly look
07:30at me, I'm Erling Haaland, I'm a superhuman freak run, and the turnaround was complete
07:35at 5-3.
07:36Or to, you know, put that another way, in Erling Haaland's first 20 minutes of German football,
07:41he scored a hat-trick with his first three shots and only his first ten touches.
07:48He's an alien, he's not normal.
07:50Number 1, Alvaro Recoba, Inter Milan 1997.
07:55Now if a time traveller, and just go with me on this, if a time traveller had appeared
07:58in the Inter Milan dressing room ahead of this game, and told those present that they would
08:04go down in the annals of footballing debut history, all eyes would have immediately turned
08:09to the 20-plus million Brazilian lacing his boots.
08:12But Ronaldo's debut is frankly nothing compared to that of his fellow debutant, Alvaro Recoba.
08:19Trading 1-0 to Brescia, the Uruguayan came off the bench and decided to have his own,
08:23personal, goal of the season competition in the half hour that remained.
08:26The first, a rasper directly into the Castanetti Superiore, would have been enough, but the
08:33winner five minutes from time somehow managed to outdo it.
08:36Fully 30 yards from goal, he somehow both bends and wellies a free kick into the one part
08:42of the goal the keeper can't reach.
08:44I mean, look, he's that, he's standing there, he's that side, and he looks about six years
08:49old when it flies past him.
08:50And that's it, that's the video.
08:52Thank you so very much for watching and making it all the way till the end.
08:55Somebody's keen.
08:56While you're here, please do consider subscribing to the 442 YouTube channel.
08:59We've got loads of awesome football content dropping all through the week, as well as
09:02an amazing library of documentaries, player interviews, and performance guides as well.
09:07Until next time though, thank you once again for watching.
09:09I do hope you enjoyed yourself, and I'll see you soon.
09:12Goodbye.
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