Brazil's old man chases 1,000
goals
The star of the 1994 World Cup is still playing at 41, in a bid to
match Pele and two others who have passed an extraordinary
goalscoring landmark.
At times it can seem as if everyone you meet in Brazil is speaking
about the same thing: 'Romario - Rumo ao Milesimo Gol'. Romario -
and his quest for a thousand goals. The former Brazil striker is
one of football's most flamboyant characters. He rose from the
slums of northern Rio de Janeiro to play for, among others, PSV
Eindhoven and Barcelona. Today, he commands a huge property empire
and lives in a luxury apartment in Barra da Tijuca, a beachside
enclave for Rio de Janeiro's nouveaux riches. He has a fleet of
top-of-the-range cars and is rumoured to be buying a giant yacht.
Yet still Romario wants more. More goals, to be precise. Two of
them. Today, in a derby against arch-rivals Flamengo, Vasco da
Gama's 41-year-old striker could score his 1,000th goal.
Romario is the third-highest scorer for Brazil, with 71 goals from
85 appearances. He won the World Cup with (and, some would argue,
for) his country in 1994, the Spanish league with Barcelona and the
Dutch championship twice with PSV. But he last played for Brazil in
April 2005, the year when he celebrated his thirty-ninth birthday
and, with 22 goals, was the top scorer in the Brazilian
championship. Since then he has become a nomad, turning out for
sides as far away as Miami FC and Adelaide United in what cynics
say is an increasingly undignified attempt to reach his
target.
In January he returned to Brazil for one final attempt at the
record, with Rio based Vasco, his first club. The veteran striker
claimed he needed 13 more goals to achieve his ambition. If he
reached that target he would become the third Brazilian and fourth
player ever to do so, alongside Pele, who netted 1,281 goals in
1,363 professional games, Arthur Friedenreich, whose Brazilian
record Pele set out to beat, and Hungary's Ferenc Puskas.
There is probably no greater example of Romario's cunning than his
quest to score his 1,000th goal. Brazil's media greeted the
announcement with scepticism, joking that many of the 'career'
goals were scored in beach kickabouts. This is not true, although
the tally does include goals scored in friendlies and at junior
level.
'Romario's only hope is that football has changed,' stated Marcos
Eduardo Neves, a football writer for the Jornal do Brasil, arguing
that the game's globalisation had deprived Brazilian clubs of their
top players, allowing an aged Romario to shine in the low quality
home league. 'Europe takes the juice and spits out the stone,'
Neves argued, 'leaving Brazil with people either on the rise or in
decline.' Romario, he went on, was unmistakably in the second
category.
