Romário Hangs Up His Boots

After twenty plus years as a professional footballer and (maybe) one thousand goals, Romário de Souza Faria is now officially hanging up his shooting boots. For good.

“To be honest, I’m stopping because I don’t see myself in any shape to continue playing,” Romário admitted. “I haven’t played since November, I’ve put on three or four kilos since then and, at this age, it’s difficult to get back to fitness.”

It’s been a slightly bizarre end to one of the great careers. The whole thousand goal things got a bit silly towards the end, and seems the numbers only really add up if you include testimonials, friendlies, youth games and such. The spells with Al-Sadd, Miami FC and Adelaide United weren’t exactly glorious, and that business involving the finasteride and the baldy juice was a depressing end to the man’s fourth and final spell at Vasco de Gama.

But…

Odd as his final years were, Romário won’t be remembered for them. He’ll be remembered as a World Cup winner with Brazil, a World Cup Golden Ball winner and the 1994 FIFA World Player of the Year. He’ll be remembered as a man who won titles and led the goalscoring charts in Spain, Holland and Brazil. One look at the video below, mostly from his golden years at at PSV and Barcelona, is enough to remind us what a little genius Romário was.

UPDATE: Seems the internet police got to that video pretty quickly. Shame, because it was excellent. But here’s a collection of Romário’s best goals from his time at PSV, which formed a big chunk of the original video.

And here are highlights of the great man’s spell at Barcelona, which constituted the other chunk.

And one of Romário’s defining performances for Brazil can be seen over at World Cup Blog.

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Category: World Football