Romário

I will talk about one of the greatest soccer players in the world. Romário de Souza Faria, better known simply as Romário, born on January 29, 1966 in Rio de Janeiro. He started his career playing for Vasco da Gama in 1985 where he won two State Championships (1987/88), and scored his first official goal on August 18 during a match against Nova Venécia team. Between 1988 and 1992 he played for PSV Eindhoven, which won the Dutch League in 1989.





















Hristo Stoichkov, Jose Mari Bakero, Josep Guardiola, Michael Laudrup and Ronald Koeman, he helped the club win the League, becoming the season's top goalscorer, scoring 30 goals in 33 matches. Romário helped Brazil national team win the 1994 FIFA World Cup and was one of the most prolific strikers in the world in the 1990s.

In 1993, during Romário's successful season at Barcelona, he was called to join the national team for the America Cup. During one of the matches in Brazil, coach Carlos Alberto Parreira assigned Romário as a substitute, after which he expressed his dissatisfaction, saying he wouldn't have come over from Spain if he had known he was not going to play.

These declarations caused Parreira to ban Romário from the Brazilian team. Brazil played the first seven matches of the 1994 World Cup qualification without Romário, and suffered their first loss ever in World Cup qualifying against Bolivia. Journalists and fans claimed for his presence. Brazil had to beat Uruguay at Maracana Stadium to be the first in their group. Before the match against Uruguay, Parreira gave up and called Romário.

Brazil won 2-0, with Romário scoring both goals, and was qualified to the World Cup. At the World Cup finals, he partnered with Bebeto in the attack to lead his country to a record fourth World Cup title. He scored five goals in the tournament: one in each of the three first round matches, one against the Netherlands in quarterfinals, and the game-winning header against Sweden in the semifinals. He also assisted Bebeto in the only goal of the match against the United States in the eightfinals. He was voted the most outstanding player of the tournament.

He was named FIFA World Player of the Year in 1994, after being the runner-up in 1993. In 1995 he returned to Brazil to play for Flamengo. He spent the next year in Valencia. In 1998, he missed out the World Cup and then returned to Flamengo until 1999.

He played for Vasco da Gama again in 2000, winning the Mercosur Cup, the Brazilian League, the South American and Brazilian Footballer of the Year award. From 2002 until 2004 he played for Fluminense. On October 21, 2004 he was fired from the club after a conflict with the coach. He then went back to play for the team he started at, Vasco da Gama. In 2005, at nearly 40 years of age, Romário scored 22 goals in the Brazilian Championship, which made him the league's top goalscorer. On April 28, 2005, Romário played his last game with the Brazilian national team.

He scored the second goal in Brazil's 3-0 win against Guatemala. On January 28, 2006, one day before his fortieth birthday, he scored his 950th goal. Romário has the mark of 984 league goals as of September 20th, 2006, and his goal is to score 1000 official goals, a mark officially obtained only by former Brazilian attacker Pelé.

Romário is the third highest goalscorer in the history of the Brazilian team, as well as the second highest scorer of all time in the Brazilian League, finishing as the top scorer six times. He is catalogued as one of the greatest forwards in the history of the game by FIFA. And in my opinion he is the best soccer player that the world has seen.

Watch the video:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PWwoqEfzzUM



Project from
Bárbara F. Nogueira
Upper 3
Teacher Laura

Centro Britânico
Pompéia Branch