About those 1,000 goals*, Romario

By: Bob | March 20th, 2007

If your team was scored on by a lithe Brazilian striker down at your local park sometime during the past couple of decades you could be part of history. As the 41-year-old Romario approaches the magical number of 1,000 goals scored over his career, it is becoming more and more obvious that his magical number is more of a mystical one and even the most minor of goals count for something.

It has been evident for a while now to Pele and others that Romario’s accounting skills are not as sharp as his scoring skills, but little did we know just how far he is willing to stretch things to become just the second player in history to notch 1,000 goals.

Two of his goals, for example, were scored during a festive match in 2004 between members of Brazil’s World Cup winning side from 10 years earlier and a team of retired Mexican internationals.

Romario has also scored for unlikely-sounding outfits as “Friends of Aldair” and “PSV Stars” and against teams such as “Friends of Luisinho.”

No offense to Friends of Aldair, but when I was playing striker for Friends of Blogger Bob I scored a hat-trick against them too. Their left side was weak that year.

Digging deeper into the numbers one finds that just 749 of Romario’s goals were scored in full internationals and competitive club games. That is still a lot of goals and worthy of admiration especially since he has continued to score late in his career, but still there is something cheap about setting all your efforts on a record that isn’t even a record.

It would be truly admirable if Romario decided to celebrate two goals from now by thanking the crowd for being on hand for his 751st goal.