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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-hyped back pass for David Silva to score and
01:40then just leathered one in from fully 30 yards. Number 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. What followed were three goals that absolutely scream late 80s
02:12British football and come from a 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 conversation
02:39both starts and ends. 18 years before he'd head down the tunnel at the World Cup final with
02:43sorrow in his heart and Marco Matarazzi's necklace imprinted on his forehead, Zizou arrived off the
02:49bench with his country 2-0 down to the Czechs. Immediately looking like someone's much older
02:53brother deciding to bully a game in the playground, he weaved his way through three players before
02:57burying an unstoppable 30-yarder with five minutes to go. Not two minutes later, he left a clear foot
03:03and a half above everyone else in the box to score a header you would struggle to replicate with a
03:08stepladder. A great cameo, thought French football fans, but still surely not enough for him to take
03:12captain Eric Cantona's place in the team. Not unless, I don't know, in the next few months he was about
03:17to dive boots-first into the crowd at Selhurst Park after being sent off against Crystal Palace and
03:22receive an enormous domestic and international football ban, but that's not going to happen.
03:26Number 6, Fabrizio Ravanelli, Middlesbrough 1996. Yeah, so Middlesbrough in the mid-1990s feels more
03:34like a fever dream than it does actual footballing history. Returning them to the Premier League,
03:39Brian Robson decided that the best approach was to bring in some of the most creative,
03:43expressive players in world football to a part of the country famous for drowning a chicken cutlet
03:48and cheese sauce and 80% of its buildings being made out of corrugated metal. And apologies to any
03:53middlesbrough fans who might take issue with that. I personally really like a par mode, but I'm also
03:57crucially not scoring double figures in Serie A and getting modelling contracts off Dior. And the
04:02crazy thing is, this policy did actually work for precisely one game. Joining Samba stars like
04:08Giannino, Emerson and Robbie Musto was Italian goal scorer Fabrizio Ravanelli, who promptly scored
04:15a hat-trick against the mighty Liverpool. Despite them being fourth at one stage, the results then
04:19spectacularly fell off a cliff and borough were promptly relegated back whence they came.
04:24Oh well, it was worth a shot. Number 5, Gianluigi Buffon, Parma 1995. You see, great debuts aren't
04:30all about scoring goals unless, well, you know, that's your job. And Gianluigi Buffon announced
04:35himself on the big stage with a shutout for the ages. Barely 17 years old and only four years after
04:41converting from an outfield player in the club's academy, he was thrown into the deep end against
04:46Carlo Ancelotti's all-conquering Milan side. The game somehow finished completely goalless
04:51thanks to Buffon repeatedly frustrating Roberto Baggio, Marco Simeone and Ali Dyer's cousin
04:57George Weyer. He might have made over 1,000-plus competitive appearances after this and won every
05:03single accolade 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. At home in the Los Angeles derby, which is apparently a thing, on comes the great
05:28one and MLS is changed forever. Two minutes in and his presence alone is enough to allow
05:33Galaxy to pull one back, but the equaliser could not possibly have been more Zlatan if the ball
05:39had been covered in bad tattoos and started 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. His second arrived in suitably dramatic fashion with the game having
05:55ticked into injury time, he somehow outjumped two defenders and the goalkeeper to nod in the
06:00most dramatic of winners.
06:02You wanted Zlatan, he said in the press conference, I gave you Zlatan.
06:073-1. Wayne Rooney, Manchester United 2004. It's a tale as old as time. A once in a generation
06:13talent bursts onto the scene with his hometown team, secures a big money move to one of the
06:17biggest clubs in the world, but the step up is initially slightly too much for them.
06:21Not 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 Fener Bacci's head down the toilet.
06:35Two goals in the first half, the second a delightful long ranger were capped off with
06:39a brilliant free 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 2004,
06:49no other player in world football looked more exciting. None.
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. But it was nothing,
07:05nothing compared to his arrival at Dortmund. With 55 minutes gone, his team's title challenge
07:10looked in tatters as they trailed 3-1 to Augsburg. They threw Haaland on and within three minutes,
07:16he'd halved the deficit with a great strike from a narrow angle.
07:19Eleven minutes after that, and following an equaliser from Jadon Sancho, he raced through
07:23with Thorgan Hazard for a neat tap-in. Nine minutes after that, he burst clear of the defence,
07:28doing that big, weird, gangly look at me, I'm Erling Haaland, I'm a superhuman freak run,
07:33and the turnaround was complete at 5-3. Or to, you know, put that another way, in Erling Haaland's
07:39first 20 minutes of German football, he scored a hat-trick with his first three shots and only
07:45his first 10 touches. He's an alien, he's not normal.
07:50Number 1, Alvaro Recoba, Inter Milan, 1997. Now if a time traveller, and just go with me on this,
07:57if a time traveller had appeared in the Inter Milan dressing room ahead of this game,
08:01and told those present that they would go down in the annals of footballing debut history,
08:07all eyes would have immediately turned to the 20-plus million Brazilian lacing his boots.
08:12But Ronaldo's debut is frankly nothing compared to that of his fellow debutant,
08:17Alvaro Recoba. Trading 1-0 to Brescia, the Uruguayan came off the bench and decided to have
08:22his own, personal, goal-of-the-season competition in the half-hour that remained. The first a rasper
08:28directly into the Castanete Superiori would have been enough, but the winner five minutes from time
08:34somehow managed to outdo it. Fully 30 yards from goal, he somehow both bends and wellies a free
08:40kick into the one part of the goal the keeper can't reach. I mean, look, he's that, he's standing
08:46there, he's that side, and he looks about six years old when it flies past him.
08:50And that's it. That's the video. Thank you so very much for watching and making it all the way
08:54till the end. Somebody's keen. While you're here, please do consider subscribing to the 442
08:58YouTube channel. We've got loads of awesome football content dropping all through the week,
09:02as well as an amazing library of documentaries, player interviews, and performance guides as well.
09:07Until next time, though, thank you once again for watching. I do hope you enjoyed yourself,
09:11and I'll see you soon. Goodbye.
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