Brilliant beginners and super starters: we reckon these are football's best debuts ever.
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00:00As I was aggressively informed by my girlfriend's father when I turned up to meet him in a t-shirt
00:04that ironically read World's Greatest Love Machine, first impressions count. In fact,
00:10you can likely mask over an entire lifetime of mediocrity if you just get off on the right foot.
00:15The beauty of football, of course, is that the right foot can literally be your right foot,
00:19and using it to make some vital contributions to your team's fortunes before those in the stands
00:22even fully know your name can see you idolised for years to come. I'm Adam Cleary, this is 442,
00:28and these are the 10 greatest debuts in football history.
00:32Number 10, Ronaldo, Real Madrid 2002. 61 seconds, that's all it took for Ronaldo to get off the
00:39mark in the white of Real Madrid. If you started listening to Frank Sinatra's My Way when he comes
00:43on to replace Javier Portillo in the 64th minute, the big man's not even had regrets and a few of
00:48them by the time Ronaldo's lashed the ball past the Alaves goalkeeper. Not content there though,
00:53he later gleefully receives a pass from Steve McManaman of all people for a second,
00:56Maka hilariously asking for the ball back after playing him in, before then missing a fairly
01:01easy chance to notch a hat-trick. A miss, by the way, he has always asserted was deliberate so as
01:05to not set the bar too high for the rest of the season. Very clever.
01:09Number 9, Sergio Aguero, Manchester City 2011.
01:13Two goals and an assist for Sergio Aguero, I don't find that tall impressive.
01:18Yeah, alright, fair enough, there were months-long spells during Aguero's time at City where it did
01:22sort of feel like he was doing that every single game. But what if I was to tell you that this
01:26particular haul came despite him not even muddying his boots until the 59th minute?
01:31Eh, yeah, see, pretty good. In a dazzling half-hour cameo, he arrived on the end of a
01:35Mika Richards cross for a tap-in, played a blind head-hyped back pass for David Silva to score and
01:40then just leathered one in from fully 30 yards. Number 8, Alan Shearer, Southampton, 1988.
01:47A handy reminder to anyone who needs it that football wasn't invented in 1992 here as the
01:51Premier League's record goalscorer was already banging them in four years before it even launched.
01:57Making his way through Southampton's academy, the Saints saw enough talent in a rosy-cheeked
02:0117-year-old Alan Shearer to give him a full debut against high-flying Arsenal, themselves
02:06some eight games unbeaten. What followed were three goals that absolutely scream late 80s
02:12British football and come from a combined distance of about five very muddy yards.
02:16This did also make him the youngest ever scorer of a hat-trick in the English top flight and
02:20that is a record that, much like his statue outside St. James' Park, will likely be standing
02:25for a very long time.
02:26Number 7, Zinedine Zidane, France, 1994.
02:29Now, if you ever want to discuss the greatest possible contrast between someone's first
02:34and last appearance for a club, Zinedine Zidane's France career is probably where that conversation
02:39both starts and ends. 18 years before he'd head down the tunnel at the World Cup final with
02:43sorrow in his heart and Marco Matarazzi's necklace imprinted on his forehead, Zizou arrived off the
02:49bench with his country 2-0 down to the Czechs. Immediately looking like someone's much older
02:53brother deciding to bully a game in the playground, he weaved his way through three players before
02:57burying an unstoppable 30-yarder with five minutes to go. Not two minutes later, he left a clear foot
03:03and a half above everyone else in the box to score a header you would struggle to replicate with a
03:08stepladder. A great cameo, thought French football fans, but still surely not enough for him to take
03:12captain Eric Cantona's place in the team. Not unless, I don't know, in the next few months he was about
03:17to dive boots-first into the crowd at Selhurst Park after being sent off against Crystal Palace and
03:22receive an enormous domestic and international football ban, but that's not going to happen.
03:26Number 6, Fabrizio Ravanelli, Middlesbrough 1996. Yeah, so Middlesbrough in the mid-1990s feels more
03:34like a fever dream than it does actual footballing history. Returning them to the Premier League,
03:39Bryan Robson decided that the best approach was to bring in some of the most creative, expressive
03:44players in world football to a part of the country famous for drowning a chicken cutlet and cheese sauce
03:49and 80% of its buildings being made out of corrugated metal. And apologies to any Middlesbrough fans who
03:53might take issue with that, I personally really like a par mode, but I'm also crucially not scoring
03:58double figures in Serie A and getting modelling contracts off Dior. And the crazy thing is this
04:02policy did actually work for precisely one game. Joining Samba stars like Giannino Emerson and Robbie
04:10Musto was Italian goalscorer Fabrizio Ravanelli who promptly scored a hat-trick against the mighty
04:16Liverpool. Despite them being fourth at one stage, the results then spectacularly fell off a cliff and
04:21Borough were promptly relegated back whence they came. Oh well, it was worth a shot.
04:25Number 5, Jean-Luigi Buffon, Parma 1995. You see, great debuts aren't all about scoring goals,
04:31unless, well, you know, that's your job. And Jean-Luigi Buffon announced himself on the big
04:36stage with a shutout for the ages. Barely 17 years old and only 4 years after converting from an
04:42outfield player in the club's academy, he was thrown into the deep end against Carlo Ancelotti's
04:47all-conquering Milan side. The game somehow finished completely goalless thanks to Buffon
04:52repeatedly frustrating Roberto Baggio, Marco Simeone and Ali Dyer's cousin George Weyer. He
04:58might have made over 1,000-plus competitive appearances after this and won every single
05:03accolade worth winning, but he'll never have forgotten his first.
05:07Number 4, Zlatan Ibrahimović, LA Galaxy 2018.
05:11Now what can be said about Zlatan Ibrahimović's US debut and indeed his entire career that hasn't
05:17already been said by the man himself about himself. 3-1 down, at home in the Los Angeles
05:25derby which is apparently a thing, on comes the great one and MLS is changed forever.
05:30Two minutes in and his presence alone is enough to allow Galaxy to pull one back but the equaliser
05:35could not possibly have been more Zlatan if the ball had been covered in bad tattoos and started
05:41referring to itself in the third person. There's only one Zlatan.
05:44A volley 40 yards from goal that sailed both into the net and into the history books with the same
05:51level of vim. His second arrived in suitably dramatic fashion with the game having ticked into
05:55injury time he somehow out jumped two defenders and the goalkeeper to nod in the most dramatic of
06:01winners. You wanted Zlatan he said in the press conference, I gave you Zlatan.
06:073-1 Wayne Rooney, Manchester United 2004
06:10It's a tale as old as time. A once in a generation talent bursts onto the scene with his hometown team,
06:15secures a big money move to one of the biggest clubs in the world but the step up is initially
06:20slightly too much for them. Not Wayne Rooney though, Wayne Rooney absolutely took the piss.
06:26Noping out of David Moyes Everton for a pricely 27 million he arrived at Old Trafford still just 18
06:31years old and promptly put Fenerbahce's head down the toilet. Two goals in the first half,
06:36the second a delightful Long Ranger were capped off with a brilliant free kick before his Manchester
06:41United career was even one hour old. And yeah okay he looks like he owns a failing chain of chip shops
06:47now but that night in 2004 no other player in world football looked more exciting. None.
06:532. Erling Haaland, Borussia Dortmund 2020 Getting two goals against West Ham in his
06:58proper Manchester City debut because nobody counts the Community Shield was an impressive start for
07:03Erling Haaland. But it was nothing, nothing compared to his arrival at Dortmund. With 55 minutes gone
07:09his team's title challenge looked in tatters as they trailed 3-1 to Augsburg. They threw Haaland on
07:14and within three minutes he'd halved the deficit with a great strike from a narrow angle. 11 minutes
07:19after that and following an equaliser from Jadon Sancho he raced through with Thorgan Hazard for a
07:25neat tap in. Nine minutes after that he burst clear of the defence doing that big weird gangly look at me
07:31I'm Erling Haaland I'm a superhuman freak run and the turnaround was complete at 5-3. Or to you know
07:37put that another way in Erling Haaland's first 20 minutes of German football he scored a hat-trick
07:43with his first three shots and only his first 10 touches. He's an alien, he's not normal.
07:501. Alvaro Ricoba, Inter Milan 1997 Now if a time traveller, and just go with me on this,
07:57if a time traveller had appeared in the Inter Milan dressing room ahead of this game
08:03and told those present that they would go down in the annals of footballing debut history,
08:07all eyes would have immediately turned to the 20 plus million Brazilian lacing his boots. But
08:12Ronaldo's debut is frankly nothing compared to that of his fellow debutant Alvaro Ricoba. Trading
08:191-0 to Brescia, the Uruguayan came off the bench and decided to have his own, personal,
08:24goal of the season competition in the half hour that remained. The first a rasper directly into the
08:29Casonetti Superiore would have been enough but the winner five minutes from time somehow managed to
08:35outdo it. Fully 30 yards from goal he somehow both bends and wellies a free kick into the one part of
08:42the goal the keeper can't reach. I mean look, he's that, he's standing there, he's that side and he
08:47looks about six years old when it flies past him. And that's it, that's the video, thank you so very
08:53much for watching and making it all the way till the end. Somebody's keen. While you're here please
08:57do consider subscribing to the 442 YouTube channel, we've got loads of awesome football content dropping
09:01all through the week as well as an amazing library of documentaries, player interviews and performance
09:06guides as well. Until next time though, thank you once again for watching, I do hope you enjoyed yourself
09:11and I'll see you soon. Goodbye!