Football Debuts That Shocked The World

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Brilliant beginners and super starters: we reckon these are football's best debuts ever.

Transcript

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,

00:19and 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

02:48the bench 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

03:02a clear foot and a half above everyone else in the box to score a header you would struggle

03:07to replicate with a stepladder. A great cameo, thought French football fans, but still surely

03:12not enough for him to take captain Eric Cantona's place in the team. Not unless, I don't know,

03:16in the next few months he was about to dive boots-first into the crowd at Selhurst Park

03:20after being sent off against Crystal Palace and receive an enormous domestic and international

03:24football ban, but that's not going to happen.

03:27Number 6, Fabrizio Ravinelli, Middlesbrough 1996.

03:30Yeah, 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, Bryan Robson decided that the

03:40best approach was to bring in some of the most creative, expressive players in world football

03:45to a part of the country famous for drowning a chicken cutlet and cheese sauce and 80% of

03:50its buildings being made out of corrugated metal. And apologies to any Middlesbrough fans who might

03:54take issue with that, I personally really like a par mode but I'm also crucially not scoring

03:58double figures in Serie A and getting modelling 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. Despite them being fourth

04:18at one stage, the results then spectacularly fell off a cliff and Borough were promptly relegated

04:22back whence they came. Oh well, it was worth a shot.

04:25Number 5, Gianluigi Buffon, Parma 1995. You see, great debuts aren't all about scoring goals

04:31unless, well, you know, that's your job. And Gianluigi Buffon announced himself on the

04:36big stage with a shutout for the ages. Barely 17 years old and only 4 years after converting

04:42from an outfield player in the club's academy, he was thrown into the deep end against Carlo

04:46Ancelotti's all-conquering Milan side. The game somehow finished completely goalless thanks

04:52to Buffon repeatedly frustrating Roberto Baggio, Marco Simeone and Ali Dyer's cousin George

04:58Weyer. He might have made over 1000 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 Ibrahimovic, LA Galaxy 2018. Now what can be said about Zlatan Ibrahimovic's

05:14US debut, and indeed his entire career, that hasn't already been said by the man himself

05:21about himself. 3-1 down. At home, in the Los Angeles derby which is apparently a thing,

05:27on comes the great one and MLS is changed forever. Two minutes in and his presence alone

05:32is enough to allow Galaxy to pull one back, but the equaliser could not possibly have been

05:37more Zlatan if the ball had been covered in bad tattoos and started referring to itself

05:42in the third person.

05:43There's only one Zlatan.

05:44A volley 40 yards from goal sailed both into the net and into the history books with the

05:50same level of vim. His second arrived in suitably dramatic fashion, with the game having ticked

05:55into injury time, he somehow out jumped two defenders and the goalkeeper to nod in the most dramatic

06:01of 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.

06:23Not Wayne Rooney though, Wayne Rooney absolutely took the piss. Noping out of David Moyes Everton

06:27for a pricely 27 million, he arrived at Old Trafford still just 18 years old and promptly

06:33put Fenerbahce'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. And

06:44yeah 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.

06:52Number two, Erling Haaland, Borussia Dortmund 2020. Getting two goals against West Ham in

06:58his proper Manchester City debut because nobody counts the Community Shield was an impressive

07:02start for Erling Haaland. But 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 from

07:18a narrow angle. 11 minutes after that and following an equaliser from Jadon Sancho, he

07:22raced through with Thorgan Hazard for a neat tap in. Nine minutes after that he burst clear

07:27of the defence doing that big, weird, gangly look at me, I'm Erling Haaland, I'm a superhuman

07:32freak run and the turnaround was complete at 5-3. Or to, you know, put that another way,

07:38in Erling Haaland's first 20 minutes of German football he scored a hat-trick with his first

07:44three shots and only his first ten touches. He's an alien, he's not normal.

07:50Number 1, Alvaro Ricoba, 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

08:03and 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, Alvaro Ricoba.

08:18Trading 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. The first,

08:27a rasper directly into the Castonetti Superiore would have been enough, but the winner five minutes

08:33from time somehow managed to outdo it. Fully 30 yards from goal, he somehow both bends

08:39and wellies a free kick into the one part of the goal the keeper can't reach. I mean,

08:44look, he's standing there, 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 till the end.

08:55Somebody's keen. While 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 an amazing library

09:04of documentaries, player interviews and performance guides as well. Until next time though,

09:08thank you once again for watching. I do hope you enjoyed yourself and I'll see you soon. Goodbye.

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