Brilliant beginners and super starters: we reckon these are football's best debuts ever.
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00:00 As I was aggressively informed by my girlfriend's father when I turned up to meet them in a
00:04 t-shirt that ironically read "World's Greatest Love Machine", first impressions count.
00:09 In fact, you can likely mask over an entire lifetime of mediocrity if you just get off
00:14 on the right foot.
00:15 The beauty of football, of course, is that the right foot can literally be your right
00:18 foot, and using it to make some vital contributions to your team's fortunes before those in the
00:22 stands even fully know your name can see you idolised for years to come.
00:27 I'm Adam Cleary, this is 442, and these are the 10 Greatest Debuts in Football History.
00:32 Number 10, Ronaldo, Real Madrid 2002.
00:36 61 seconds, that's all it took for Ronaldo to get off the mark in the white of Real Madrid.
00:41 If you started listening to Frank Sinatra's "My Way" when he comes on to replace Javier
00:44 Portillo in the 64th minute, the big man's not even had regrets, and a few of them by
00:48 the time Ronaldo's lashed the ball past the Alaves goalkeeper.
00:52 Not content there, though, he later gleefully receives a pass from Steve McManaman of all
00:56 people for a second, Maka hilariously asking for the ball back after playing him in, before
01:00 then missing a fairly easy chance to notch a hat-trick.
01:02 A miss, by the way, he has always asserted was deliberate so as to not set the bar too
01:07 high for the rest of the season.
01:08 Very clever.
01:09 Number 9, Sergio Aguero, Manchester City 2011.
01:12 "Nah, two goals and an assist for Sergio Aguero, I don't find that at all impressive,
01:18 nah."
01:19 Yeah, alright, fair enough, there were months-long spells during Aguero's time at City where
01:22 it did sort of feel like he was doing that every single game.
01:25 But what if I was to tell you that this particular haul came despite him not even muddying his
01:29 boots until the 59th minute?
01:31 Eh, yeah, see, pretty good.
01:32 In a dazzling half-hour cameo, he arrived on the end of a Micah Richards cross for a
01:36 tap-in, played a blind head-height backpass for David Silva to score, and then just leathered
01:41 one in from fully 30 yards.
01:44 Number 8, Alan Shearer, Southampton 1988.
01:47 A handy reminder to anyone who needs it that football wasn't invented in 1992 here, as
01:51 the Premier League's record goalscorer was already banging them in four years before
01:56 it even launched.
01:57 Making his way through Southampton's academy, the Saint saw enough talent in a rosy-cheeked
02:01 17-year-old Alan Shearer to give him a full debut against high-flying Arsenal, themselves
02:06 some eight games unbeaten.
02:08 What followed were three goals that absolutely scream late-80s British football and come
02:13 from a combined distance of about five very muddy yards.
02:17 This did also make him the youngest ever scorer of a hat-trick in the English top flight,
02:20 and that is a record that, much like his statue outside St James' Park, will likely be
02:24 standing for a very long time.
02:26 Number 7, Zinedine Zidane, France 1994.
02:29 Now, if you ever want to discuss the greatest possible contrast between someone's first
02:34 and last appearance for a club, Zinedine Zidane's France career is probably where that conversation
02:39 both starts and ends.
02:40 18 years before he'd head down the tunnel at the World Cup final with sorrow in his
02:44 heart and Marco Materazzi's necklace imprinted on his forehead, Zizou arrived off the bench
02:49 with his country 2-0 down to the Czechs.
02:51 Immediately looking like someone's much older brother deciding to bully a game in the playground,
02:55 he weaved his way through three players before burying an unstoppable 30-yarder with five
03:00 minutes to go.
03:01 Not two minutes later, he leapt a clear foot and a half above everyone else in the box
03:05 to score a header you would struggle to replicate with a stepladder.
03:09 A great cameo, thought French football fans, but still surely not enough for him to take
03:13 Captain Eric Cantona's place in the team.
03:15 Not unless, I dunno, in the next few months he was about to dive boots-first into the
03:19 crowd at Selhurst Park after being sent off against Crystal Palace and receive an enormous
03:23 domestic and international football ban, but that's not gonna happen.
03:27 6.
03:28 Fabrizio Ravinelli - Middlesbrough 1996 Yeah, so Middlesbrough in the mid-1990s feels
03:33 more like a fever dream than it does actual footballing history.
03:37 Returning them to the Premier League, Brian Robson decided that the best approach was
03:41 to bring in some of the most creative, expressive players in world football to a part of the
03:46 country famous for drowning a chicken cutlet in cheese sauce and 80% of its buildings being
03:50 made out of corrugated metal.
03:52 And apologies to any Middlesbrough fans who might take issue with that, I personally really
03:55 like Ipamo, but I'm also crucially not scoring double figures in Serie A and getting modelling
04:00 contracts off Dior.
04:02 And the crazy thing is, this policy did actually work.
04:05 For precisely one game.
04:07 Joining Samba stars like Juninho, Emerson and Robby Musto was Italian goalscorer Fabrizio
04:13 Ravinelli who promptly scored a hat-trick against the mighty Liverpool.
04:17 Despite them being 4th at one stage, the results then spectacularly fell off a cliff and Borough
04:21 were promptly relegated back whence they came.
04:23 Oh well, it was worth a shot.
04:25 5.
04:26 Jean-Louis Dubuffon - Parma 1995 You see, great debuts aren't all about scoring
04:31 goals unless, well, you know, that's your job, and Jean-Louis Dubuffon announced himself
04:36 on the big stage with a shutout for the ages.
04:39 Only 17 years old and only 4 years after converting from an outfield player in the club's academy,
04:44 he was thrown into the deep end against Carlo Ancelotti's all-conquering Milan side.
04:49 The game somehow finished completely goalless thanks to Dubuffon repeatedly frustrating
04:54 Roberto Baggio, Marco Simeone and Ali Dier's cousin George Weah.
04:58 He might have made over 1,000+ competitive appearances after this and won every single
05:03 accolade worth winning, but he'll never have forgotten his first.
05:07 4.
05:08 Zlatan Ibrahimović - LA Galaxy 2018 Now what can be said about Zlatan Ibrahimović's
05:14 US debut and indeed his entire career that hasn't already been said by the man himself
05:20 about himself?
05:21 3-1 down.
05:22 At home, in the Los Angeles Derby, which is apparently a thing, on comes the Great One
05:28 and MLS is changed forever.
05:31 Two minutes in and his presence alone is enough to allow Galaxy to pull one back, but the
05:34 equaliser could not possibly have been more Zlatan if the ball had been covered in bad
05:40 tattoos and started referring to itself in the third person.
05:44 A volley 40 yards from goal sailed both into the net and into the history books with the
05:50 same level of fim.
05:52 His second arrived in suitably dramatic fashion with the game having ticked into injury time,
05:56 he somehow outjumped two defenders and the goalkeeper to nod in the most dramatic of
06:02 winners.
06:03 "You wanted Zlatan," he said in the press conference, "I gave you Zlatan."
06:07 3-1 down.
06:08 Wayne Rooney - Manchester United 2004 It's a tale as old as time.
06:12 A once-in-a-generation talent bursts onto the scene with his hometown team, secures
06:16 a big-money move to one of the biggest clubs in the world, but the step-up is initially
06:19 slightly too much for them.
06:23 Not Wayne Rooney though, Wayne Rooney absolutely took the piss.
06:26 Noping out of David Moyes Everton for a pricely 27 million, he arrived at Old Trafford still
06:31 just 18 years old and promptly put Fenerbahce's head down the toilet.
06:35 Two goals in the first half of the second, a delightful long-ranger was capped off with
06:39 a brilliant free kick before his Manchester United career was even one hour old.
06:44 And yeah, okay, he looks like he owns a failing chain of chip shops now, but that night in
06:49 2004, no other player in world football looked more exciting.
06:52 None.
06:53 2.
06:54 Erling Haaland - Borussia Dortmund 2020 Getting two goals against West Ham in his
06:58 proper Manchester City debut because nobody counts the community shield was an impressive
07:02 start for Erling Haaland.
07:04 But it was nothing, nothing compared to his arrival at Dortmund.
07:07 With 55 minutes gone, his team's title challenge looked in tatters as they trailed 3-1 to Augsburg.
07:13 They threw Haaland on, and within three minutes he'd halved the deficit with a great strike
07:18 from a narrow angle.
07:19 11 minutes after that, and following an equaliser from Jadon Sancho, he raced through with Thorgan
07:24 Hazard for a neat tap-in.
07:25 Nine minutes after that, he burst clear of the defence, doing that big, weird, gangly
07:30 look at me.
07:31 I'm Erling Haaland, I'm a superhuman freak run.
07:33 And the turnaround was complete at 5-3.
07:36 Or to, you know, put that another way, in Erling Haaland's first 20 minutes of German
07:41 football, he scored a hat-trick with his first three shots and only his first ten touches.
07:48 He's an alien.
07:49 He's not normal.
07:50 1.
07:51 Alvaro Recoba - Inter Milan 1997 Now if a time traveller had appeared in the
07:59 Inter Milan dressing room ahead of this game and told those present that they would go
08:04 down in the annals of footballing debut history, all eyes would have immediately turned to
08:09 the 20+ million Brazilian lacing his boots.
08:12 But Ronaldo's debut is frankly nothing compared to that of his fellow debutant, Alvaro Recoba.
08:19 Trailing 1-0 to Brescia, the Uruguayan came off the bench and decided to have his own,
08:23 personal, goal of the season competition in the half hour that remained.
08:27 The first, a rasper directly into the 'cazonete superiore' would have been enough, but the
08:32 winner five minutes from time somehow managed to outdo it.
08:36 Fully 30 yards from goal, he somehow both bends and wellies a free kick into the one
08:42 part of the goal the keeper can't reach.
08:44 I mean, look, he's that, he's standing there, he's that side, and he looks about
08:48 six years old when it flies past him.
09:13 (upbeat music)