Football Debuts That Shocked The World

FourFourTwo

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 the

02:49bench with his country 2-0 down to the Czechs. Immediately looking like someone's much older brother

02:54deciding to bully a game in the playground, he weaved his way through three players before burying

02:58an unstoppable 30-yarder with five minutes to go. Not two minutes later, he left a clear foot and a

03:04half 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

03:13captain Eric Cantona's place in the team. Not unless, I don't know, in the next few months he

03:17was about to dive boots-first into the crowd at Selhurst Park after being sent off against Crystal

03:21Palace and receive an enormous domestic and international football ban, but that's not going to happen.

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

03:31Yeah, so Middlesbrough in the mid-1990s feels more like a fever dream than it does actual footballing

03:37history. Returning them to the Premier League, Brian Robson decided that the best approach

03:41was to bring in some of the most creative, expressive players in world football to a part

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

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

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

03:59in Serie A and getting modelling contracts off Dior. And the crazy thing is, this policy did

04:03actually work for precisely one game. Joining Samba stars like Giannino Emerson and Robby Musto was

04:11Italian goal scorer Fabrizio Ravanelli 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. Oh 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 job,

04:33and Gianluigi Buffon announced himself on the big stage with a shutout for the ages.

04:39Barely 17 years old and only four 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 Baggio,

04:55Marco Simeone and Ali Dyer's cousin George Weyer. He might have made over 1,000 plus competitive

05:01appearances after this and won every single accolade worth winning, but he'll never have

05:06forgotten his first. Number 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

05:38the ball had been covered in bad tattoos and started referring to itself in the third person.

05:43There's only one Zlatan. A volley 40 yards from goal sailed both into the net and into

05:49the history books with the same level of vim. His second arrived in suitably dramatic fashion

05:54with the game having ticked into injury time, he somehow outjumped two defenders and the goalkeeper

05:59to 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.

06:22Ha ha ha ha. Not 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. Two goals in the first

06:36half the second, a delightful long-ranger were capped off with a brilliant free kick before

06:40his Manchester United career was even one hour old. And yeah, okay, he looks like he owns

06:45a failing chain of chip shops now, but that night in 2004, no other player in world football

06:51looked 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 counts

07:01the Community Shield was an impressive start for Erling Haaland. But it was nothing, nothing

07:05compared 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 3 minutes he'd

07:16halved the deficit with a great strike from a narrow angle. 11 minutes after that, and following

07:20an equaliser from Jadon Sancho, he raced through with Thorgan Hazard for a neat tap-in. 9 minutes

07:26after that he burst clear of the defence doing that big, weird, gangly look at me, I'm Erling

07:31Haaland, I'm a superhuman freak run, and the turnaround was complete at 5-3. Or to, you

07:37know, put that another way, in Erling Haaland's first 20 minutes of German football, he scored

07:42a hat-trick with his first 3 shots and only his first 10 touches. He's an alien, he's not

07:50normal.

07:51Born Alvaro Recoba, Inter Milan 1997. Now if a time traveller, and just go with me on

07:57this, if a time traveller had appeared in the Inter Milan dressing room ahead of this

08:01game, and told those present that they would go down in the annals of footballing debut

08:06history, all eyes would have immediately turned to the 20-plus million Brazilian lacing his

08:12boots. But Ronaldo's debut is frankly nothing compared to that of his fellow debutant, Alvaro

08:18Recoba. Trading 1-0 to Brescia, the Uruguayan came off the bench and decided to have his

08:22own, personal, goal of the season competition in the half hour that remained. The first a

08:27rasper directly into the Castonetti Superiore would have been enough, but the winner 5 minutes

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

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

08:44he's that, he's standing there, he's that side, and he looks about 6 years old when

08:49it flies past him.

09:13Nottingham, he is standing there...

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