"From who-knows-what part of the stratosphere, the tiger appears, mauls and vanishes. The goalkeeper, trapped in his cage, doesn't even have time to blink. Romario fires off one goal after another: half-volley, bicycle, on the fly, banana shot, back heel, toe poke, side tap.
Romario was born poor in a favela called Jacarezinho, but even as a child he practiced writing his name to prepare for the many autographs he would sign in his life. He clambered up the ladder to fame without paying the toll of obligatory lies: this very poor man always enjoyed the luxury of doing whatever he wished, a bar-hopping lover of the night who said what he thought without thinking about what he was going to say.
Now he has a collection of Mercedes Benzs and two-hundred-and-fifty pairs of shoes, but his best friends are still that bunch of unpresentable hustlers who, in his childhood, taught him how to make the kill."
--Eduardo Galeano, Uruguayan writer and intellectual, on the legendary Brazilian striker, Romario, winner of the World Cup and Golden Ball Award in 1994. In 1994, Romario also won the FIFA World Player of the Year Award.
Eduardo Galeano. "Romario." Soccer in Sun and Shadow. London: Verso, 2009. 193. Print.
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