Farewell to a genius... and to a brand new Ferrari
Saturday 19 April 2008 11:45
Fourteen years after first talking about ending his career – following Brazil’s 1994 World Cup title – Romário finally announced he’s done with football at the launch of his 1,000 goals DVD project in Rio de Janeiro this week.
The Noise from Brazil has already pondered what life would be like without the Shorty, but we'll once again pay tribute to the diminutive genius, the biggest menace a defender could face inside the box.
This time, though, we’ll let Romário do the talking.
Chosen by himself, here are the 11 top goals of the ace’s career. (Note that the goal chosen this week by the fans in the El Mundo Deportivo poll as Barcelona’s all-time best is only the 6th on Romário’s list).
Thanks again, Shorty!
In retirement, football won’t give Romário any more headaches – he resigned, remember, from his player/coach position at Vasco because of pain-in-the-ass directors bothering him.
But the same can’t be said about his friends.
Earlier this week while partying at a nightclub in Rio, he lent the keys to his Ferrari F-430 to a pal named Beto. Forty minutes later, at 6am, he received a call from his buddy, crying. Below is the result.
As he always did on the pitch, Romário kept a cool head and made fun of the situation. “That was fine. Beto is like a brother, I won’t charge him a cent.
"But from now on I’ll only lend him my old VW Beetle.”
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About Celso de Campos Jr
Celso de Campos Jr is a São Paulo born writer and journalist. Back in 2002, he wrote his first piece for
FourFourTwo - a small Brazilian Championship preview. Unsurprisingly, the team he picked as champion ended up in the relegation zone. With such awesome football knowledge, he has been
FourFourTwo's man in Brazil for the past eight years.