Yeah that must be it .. I know some stories get passed on and embellished along the way .. I read that he'd bought himself out for 6 million and your version fits into this little snippet I found ( also mentioned 6 million ) . Paste .. Eindhoven, so sick of his petulance his rights were sold to Barcelona in the Spanish League for the depressed transfer fee of $6 million -- a bargain compared to the $20 million Italy's Juventus club paid for native son Roberto Baggio in 1990.
In Romarios list of priorities CL was below world cup , league , Carioca league , Carnaval and the beach . CL has really only become a huge thing globally in the last 13 - 14 years .
That quote is talking about his transfer from PSV to Barca. Baggio to Juve was £8M. Don't think that's nearly $20M. EDIT: I checked the exchange rates and at the time it would have been ~$16M max. WS records Romario's Barca-Flamengo transfer as £3M for a two season loan, and then another £3M if they want to keep him afterwards, or £4M if he transfers back to Spain. Not sure how the deal with Valencia went, but I'm going to assume Barca got their £6-7M. Baggio went from Juve to Milan for £6.8M, so at that point the two transfers were pretty much on par. Does anyone know if there's a site that records historical transfer fees? Or is this another thing I'm going to have to do myself?
Maybe CL meant to Romario as much as Libertadores means to Europeans, who knows? If so, more the fool he.
Typical Brazilian apologist excuse The European Cup/champions league has always been the premier competition in Europe No league title will ever be equivalent to the importance of a champions league trophy EVER and I don’t care who the player is This is why Van Basten is IMO a whole tier above Romario at club level but Romario got lucky with WC94 otherwise he would never be remembered as anything more than a Sergio aguero with slightly better technique(slightly better dribbling over short distances ie over the first 15-20 yards from goal and was a more versatile penalty area finisher but THATS IT) a 17 year old R9 reached a higher level of performance in Holland than Romario(who wasn’t even considered better than Careca in the 80s let alone jari litmanen,jan wouters,Dennis Bergkamp all of whom pipped him to individual awards in Holland)
Depends. Is zero higher than zero? The Brazilian league isn't one of the ones where they hand out two championships every season, is it? Seriously, though, like Carlito says, the continental championship will always be more valuable than the national one. I read a Barca-article from the Dream Team era that said La Liga was more important for Barca due to the RM-obsession, and that's why they hadn't done so well in Europe. I've also seen some people seriously argue that the EPL-championship is more valuable than CL. Utter insanity. Maybe if you're Nottingham Forest... I also remember a quote from Casillas that said he valued the Decima higher than the WC win. Footballers say the weirdest things. Maybe Romario valued a Carioca Sunday carnival league the highest out of all cuz it allowed him to get to 1000 goals the quickest?
Show me one example of a time in Europe when a national league was ever held in a higher regard than continental championships?
I said globally didn't I ? Brazilians in general gave zero fuks about CL until the mid 2000s. Now kids grow up hearing that song and dream of playing in it. And the only foreign league show in Brazil in the 80s and 90s was the Italian. La Liga for example was out of the radar. We'd only see goals from it with Romario Bebeto playing there.
He would have no hope of reaching half that number had he stayed in Europe Prime Romario in Europe never scored more than 32 goals in a single club season (In an era when scoring 30+goals in a season was common place) In Brazil he scored 56 goals at 36 years old which makes me think maybe he was the Benjamin button of footballers or maybe the Brasileirão and Carioca were just crap
I am not going to pretend to know how Europeans felt about CL or European Cup through 70s,80s,90s compared to leagues because I never lived in Europe. Just saying how it was in Brazil.
You're trying to project today's reality into the 90s. This is how much Europe meant to Romario ... just at his prime, he decided to go play in Brazil so he could live in sunny Rio. He is no fool. He did what made him happy instead of obsessing with European football.
It seems to me you are conflating the actual reality of European football in the 90s and how Romario himself percieved the reality of European football to be European football was the highest standard of competition for the duration of the 90s The fact that Romario choose to play elsewhere during his prime reflects badly on himself and not on the level of competition he choose to flee from
Its not really provable by putting up links. You actually have to live it. How about Milan in the late 1980s? Or any Serie A team in the late 1990s other than perhaps Juventus? Unfortunately there aren't many examples in recent times as fanboys who don't have the attention span to follow the ups and downs of a long season focus primarily on CL from March to May each season. One example that is pretty clear though is Liverpool 2007 v Liverpool 2014. The loss in 2014 seems to sting fans more than the loss in 2007.
You guys had it tough, I can tell. But answer me this: How are we supposed to take Brazilian footballing knowledge seriously, if it took you guys 50 years to figure out the European Cup is a big deal?
Now I see where you're coming from. You're arguing the league is tougher to win because there are more games etc, while a continental cup can be won by hitting the right form at the right time. It goes both ways, though. If you slip up once in a cup, you're out. But just comparing the number of times any club has won the league as opposed to a continental competition, it becomes obvious which one is more valuable. Take Boca, you've got what, 7 Libertadores and 70 League trophies? I dunno. Also wouldn't use Liverpool as an example of anything. They're Scousers whose brain has melted after 30 years of failure and butthurt over losing top dog status.
That argument doesn't really work because then I could say "look at the number of World Club Cup wins teams have compared to # of CL titles." Of course in the old days you had to win your league first before competing in the Euro Cup. Just competing in the Euro Cup could be a rare opportunity and since you just won the league, of course your #1 priority is then the European Cup since its something new and different. New and different doesn't mean better or more prestigious though. Just take a look at any of the quarterfinals of the old European Cup. e.g. IFK Goteborg v Pananthinaikos ; Dinamo Bucarest v Dinamo Minsk; Sporting CP v Real Soceidad etc. I could go on all day... And that's the quarterfinals! In the Round of 16 you'd see scorelines of 8-0 and 10-0 sometimes in just one leg. The legit title contenders often weren't even challenged until the semifinal stage. As a whole, the tournament wasn't that amazing...
You could if you wanted to make a fool of yourself. Well, if you're going to take that attitude, it's not like a random league match against Ascoli or Coventry was filled with glitter and glamor, either. Take any EC season, and there will always be more legit challengers than in any national league.If you don't consider Real Sociedad as anything special, then how about mid-table teams in the league they won?
That's a predictable counter-argument which I easily anticipated which is why I focused on the quarterfinal stage of the EC. Not some preliminary round which might be the EC-equivalent of a Juve - Ascoli league match. Well, 6th-place Betis finished only 5 points behind Sociedad. Plus Gijon had a good team back then too, but fell off the pace once it became clear their only chance at silverware was the domestic cup. Were there 8 legit contenders in the EC? Please...
Just take a look at the goal difference of various winners. It isn't so extreme as some think. Not to mention that all-time lists of the 1970s and 1980s show many players who never shined in a World Cup or weren't even there.