So… listen to this… there are a lot of psychos in football, but Edmundo, the Animal… I swear God created this guy just to mess with us… he was good enough that by 97, after 40 goal contributions in 28 matches, he had legitimate journalists in Brazil, arguing that he deserved the Ballon D’Or over Ronaldo O Fenómeno himself… but if you took your eyes off him for a second, the next moment you’d find him either holding a pet chimpanzee and feeding it beer or pulling some other crazy stunt…at times, far, far worse than that… For 16 years, he had half the world on its knees begging him to chill out and just focus on football and it never worked… In Italy, they got the guy to lock in… more or less. . .
for about 5 months, and he had Fiorentina completely dominating the Serie A for 20 consecutive match days, something that Batistuta and Rui Costa had never managed on their own… but still, when the Carnival came around, despite him allegedly having already made 35 round trips to Brazil over the previous year, once Batistuta went down injured with the club begging Edmundo to stay… he couldn’t care less… the moment they got a hold of him, the y pleaded, telling him: “If you just keep going, right now, you’re top 3 in the world, every team on the planet is gonna be coming after you… there will be money raining down from the skies for you”. . .
and you know what he said? “If I gotta go to Europe… I don’t wanna be the best in the world”. .
. but the funny thing about this… is that I’m pretty sure he wasn’t even talking about the sunshine, the beaches and the parties… It was always about Vasco Da Gama… that guy and that god forsaken club had the kind of love-hate relationship not even Shakespeare could have written… At 19, Botafogo finally kicked him out of the club after he walked into their training session completely naked… and with no club willing to welcome such a nutjob into their academy, for some reason, Vasco Da Gama who, by the way, happened to be his childhood club, decided to take that gamble… and though 2 years later, with the guy already closing in on his 21st anniversary, they were still terrified of what would happen if they brought him into the first team, he went into the Copinha, the most prestigious youth competition in Brazil and not only led them to their first ever title, but scored a solo goal so oddly similar to one of Pelé’s greatest, that in the blink of an eye, he had millionaires Palmeiras coming in with half a million dollars for a player with 0 professional matches… and they still got denied… since before the negotiations ended, Vasco gave him his debut, and even with the great Bebeto by his side, he instantly took the man of the match, putting in such a performance that by the time Palmeiras called back, his agent literally laughed in their faces and told them: “no chance you’re getting him now”. .
. A year later, the guy had already become a regular for the national team, he was on 32 goal contributions, going goal for goal in a team with Bebeto, Jardel and Roberto Dinamite, he had led Vasco on an invincible run for the Carioca Championship and, hilariously, after being invited for a 5-a-side match with Zico, the biggest legend of their biggest rivals, even he was telling their staff to “hold on to this kid, he destroyed us, he is god damn phenomenal”. .
. and still, once the transfer market opened, they didn’t wait a second before shipping him out, instantly taking a 2 million dollar offer from Palmeiras, with their president telling the press: “I am not selling a player, I’m selling a problem”. .
. which is incredibly ironic, considering that that same guy would resign and sell Edmundo again 4 different times… maybe because, at Palmeiras, he was out of this world… Palmeiras hadn’t won a single title in 17 years… but once Edmundo arrived, with 9 goals in the 12 matches before the final, he immediately took them to the Paulista Championship title, then… scored a brace in the final of the Rio São Paulo tournament to make that another trophy, and eventually still managed to go way further… leading Palmeiras to the final of the Brazilian Championship itself, scoring to take the title as their top scorer and being named the best forward in the country… somehow, running it all back the next year, now with Rivaldo playing by his side… this time, not even settling for a goal in the final against direct rivals Corinthians… but going even further, dribbling one of their players, only to stop and ask him to try again… Still, as you may imagine, that is all sounding a bit too “mentally stable”, the reality is that aside from all the goals, Edmundo had started a riot in a match against São Paulo, had been handed a 40 day ban for slapping a referee and had literally been nicknamed by the press as “the animal”… he was the only striker in the world capable of taking 5 red cards in a single season and still get an offer to join Real Madrid at the end of year… an offer that he refused, claiming that Palmeiras not only paid him more, but was a bigger club… all decisions that he clearly regretted, once the national team manager decided to punish him by leaving him out of the World Cup squad and instead bringing in a 17 year old Ronaldo that, at the time, looked more like a kid on a school trip than anything else…… though, it must be said, Edmundo clearly did not learn any lessons from that… In his third season, he went in, by surprising his own wife with the birth of his first child, the son of some model he had cheated on her with though, somehow, the drama did not distract him a bit, still going on a run of 15 goals in 14 matches, only being stopped once out in Ecuador for a Copa Libertadores match, where he tripped on a camera, kicking it in anger as the cameraman tried to pick up…. sort of refusing to apologize and somehow managing to blow things up to the point he ended up barricaded in his hotel room with the Ecuadorian Army waiting for him outside his window for days as the Brazilian embassy desperately tried to deescalate the situation… eventually making it back to Brazil and posing for a photoshoot with a teddy bear in an attempt to break past his bad boy image, then quickly sparking a massive fallout with several of his teammates, refusing to renew his contract and leaving the club out of nowhere, as the fans who just two weeks before seemed in love with him, now chanted that he was “the biggest traitor in the world”.
. . and I gotta say, that was no exaggeration because, not only was he leaving his team without thinking twice, he went and on the promise of playing alongside Romário and Sávio in what they called “the front 3 of dreams”.
. . he joined Flamengo, the direct rivals of Vasco Da Gama, the supposed club of his heart, becoming the most expensive signing in brazilian history… Look, the hype for this trio was a nationwide phenomenon… Everyone thought they’d blow past any opposition, they even recorded a rap song that went straight to the radio charts… ironically named “the bad boy rap”.
. . but guess what?
That year ended up as the biggest disaster in his career… First of all, those 3 just did not mesh up as well as everyone thought, the rival fans even started chanting that they were “the worst front 3 in the world”, second, Flamengo’s defense was atrocious so, no matter what, there was no chance they’d ever win anything and third, to shock of no one, it was complete chaos, they got into so many scraps on the pitch that, at one point, Edmundo ended up face down on the grass, completely knocked out, depending on 5 foot 6 Romário to protect him… and if all that wasn’t enough, then, in the Copa América, after scoring a decisive goal against Argentina to put them in the final and even assisting their only goal once there, Edmundo ended up watching his teammates choke the title on penalties but even that would soon seem completely irrelevant… Just a few months later, Edmundo got into a brutal car crash that ended in the death of 3 people, one of his friends and the couple who was riding in the other car… It’s been heavily discussed whether or not Edmundo was even at fault for the accident… The trial itself lasted for over 20 years… the few points that have been fully confirmed are that first, he was not under the influence of alcohol and second, the other car ran past a road sign which would have prevented the accident… However he was definitely over the speed limit which left on trial for manslaughter, forced him to pay restitution to his friend who was almost paralyzed and landed him in jail on two different occasions… On the other hand, it’s never been made clear what part the accident played in this, but that same month, his relationship with Flamengo hit a point of complete rupture which led them to quickly loan him out to Corinthians where, despite the player insisting for years that the trauma from that day completely destroyed him, he quickly hit a period of incredible form, with 13 goals in 11 games… only to then go running off to Vasco as soon as he could, carrying that same momentum over to his old club and being welcomed with open arms despite all the controversy… at one point, scoring a hat trick against their rivals Flamengo and receiving an ovation from the entire stadium, though I can assure you no one in that crowd was ready for the kind of performances he would put down the next year… After being benched in the Copa América in favor of Ronaldo and Romário, Edmundo made it back to the starting lineup in the final and scored the opener to lead Brazil to the title nearly a decade after their last successful run… but once he made it back for the Brazilian Championship… damn… as I said before… 40 goal contributions in 28 matches… I could go on and on about that year, but if you wanna understand just how unfair it was for every other player on that league to have to go against a guy in that kinda form, I have to tell you about his performance against União São João… That day, just 27 seconds in, Edmundo scored his first and after that, believe it or not, he went dormant for about 67 minutes… then he got his second, dribbled the keeper for his third, showed up out of nowhere for his fourth and even juggled the ball in between three defenders to get his fifth… 4 goals in eleven minutes and somehow, feeling none of those goals really had that wow factor, he still made sure to show up in the final minute with an absolute screamer to become the only player in history to score 6 goals in a single Brazilian Championship match… and believe or not, that day, he missed a penalty, it could have been 7… By the end, he had led Vasco to only the 3rd league title in their history, Edmundo had broken the league’s goalscoring record which had lasted for nearly 20 years while also finishing as the top assist provider… meaning that once he took the award for the league’s player of the year, many felt that was nowhere near enough reward for what he had just pulled off… there were major figures in the league claiming he was the most in form player on the planet, so much so, that as conversations surrounding the call up for the 1998 World Cup began taking place, the journalists were all hounding Mario Zagallo with the same question: “Ronaldo or Edmundo? ”. .
. but it was right here that things started going off the rails… Following his tremendous season, somehow Fiorentina paid just 9 million dollars for his signing which, despite being one of the largest ever transfers out of Brazil, was clearly a bad deal, so much so that the Vasco president Eurico Miranda, tried to cancel the move several times realizing the mistake he had made… Regardless, once there, I think you get the idea… After just one start for the club, Edmundo was already flying back for the Carnival, claiming that the manager was sabotaging his World Cup chances by putting him on the bench and straight up threatening to not come back unless they promised him a place in the starting eleven, which only further exposed how out of touch he was after Mario Zagallo confessed that the one thing that had him thinking of leaving him out was the fact he couldn’t shut his mouth… I mean, even after leaving Romário out for similar reasons, at the World Cup, Zagallo still preferred to play good old reliable Bebeto alongside Ronaldo and even when he fell ill, quite literally having convulsions only hours before the final, he controversially still preferred playing a sick Ronaldo than taking the risk of starting Edmundo… and if all that was already guaranteed to send the animal into a spiral, then, not only did they lose, but before the summer ended, Romário, upset that Edmundo had taken his place in the tournament, painted the player’s face in one of the bathroom stalls at the bar he owned in Rio, destroying their relationship just as Edmundo, completely heartbroken watched his old teammates win the Libertadores without him, qualifying Vasco for the club world cup and leaving him with a nasty case of separation anxiety that led him to pull all those stunts I mentioned at the start of the video… Even as he, Rui Costa and Batistut a became known as “the wonder trio”, leading Fiorentina to one of the greatest league runs in their history, Edmundo simply could not imagine Vasco Da Gama becoming World Champions without him and as his trips back to Brazil became more and more frequent, he pretty much went into full self destruction, shooting insults in every direction, calling Batistuta “a loser”, Rui Costa “a hater” and causing enough chaos that after being top of the league for ages and making it to the Coppa Italia final… Fiorentina came out of that year with no silverware… but somehow, even then, he had managed to be impressive enough on the pitch that after he unbelievably got Vasco to gather up a dozen sponsors and a handful of bank loans in order to put down a brazilian record 14 million euro bid for him, Fiorentina’s president insisted on not letting him go… for comparison, Ronaldo’s world record move two years earlier had cost just 5 million more… Still, after much back and forth, Edmundo did make it back to Vasco and after finishing off the year with a streak of 11 goals in 12 matches, even being joined by his now sworn enemy Romário as the club set up a major assault for the title of world champions… well… he did start off great, demolishing Man United 3 to 1, assisting Romário as the two celebrated arm in arm and then dropping their center back with a single touch to score one of the greatest goals of his career… but then, in the final, disaster struck… An absurd offside call denied him of the most important goal of his life and after the whole thing went down to a penalty shootout, with Edmundo needing to score to keep it all going, he missed the target completely… sending him over the edge… into absolute madness… Edmundo had been promised Romário would only be staying for the club world cup, but after all of it, not only did they decide to keep him at the club for good but ended up giving him Edmundo’s captain armband after he went out injured for a couple days… leading to the greatest public feud in the history of brazilian football… with the fans completely siding with Edmundo and calling Romário a traitor, quite literally booing him throughout most of their matches, while the board did the complete opposite, backing Romário and sending Edmundo further down a spiral which prompted him to force his way out of the club, joining Santos on loan… even if, paradoxically, on the pitch the two had been easily the greatest striking duo in South America… No matter what, at Santos, the club simply could not afford his salary, missing one payment after the other and eventually kicking him out the club after he told the press he “wished he would win the lottery so he could quit football for good”. .
. then moving back to Italy at Napoli and disappointing massively, clearly showing that he indeed had no desire to play anymore… eventually landing a move to Cruzeiro which burned to the ground even faster after he admitted to the press right as he was about to face Vasco that he “hoped not to score” and then being accused of missing a penalty on purpose as his old fans chanted his name from the stands… soon exiling himself for a year and a half in Japan, demolishing that league as rumours of a retirement went around… only for him to shock everyone with the most absurd career decisions, first moving back to Vasco, only to quickly be on his way out again, complaining their squad was simply too weak to compete… and then joining Romário, out of all people, at Fluminense… and dropping out after an injury riddled season to sign for a 4th tier club in a marketing stunt that was supposed to raise money for a social project… still somehow finding a way to get into trouble with the board, abandoning it all after two games, as the entire country labelled him as a “washed up player”. .
. though they definitely jumped to conclusions… With no top club willing to sign him, Edmundo joined Figueirense who had spent 90% of their history in the second tier and began clawing his way back to the top, eventually ending the season with 13 goals in 11 matches, breaking the club’s goal scoring record, saving them from relegation and going as far as scoring a hat trick in a match that was supposed to have been fixed by the referee, who eventually confessed he was left scared for his life, having to explain to the criminals running the scheme that, in his words: “what could I do going up against a savage like that? ”.
. .
