Boards
Classic Football Youtube #4: ENZO FRANCESCOLI
So good that Zidane named his son after him, Enzo Francescoli is already a very well-respected footballer; this is especially the case in South America, where he played mostly for River Plate and the Uruguayan national team and won everything worth winning in South American football twice over (this still during a time when the clubs there could afford to hold on to anyone with a bit of talent).
When Francescoli did leave for Europe at the end of the 80s most people expected him to go to one of the big Italian or Spanish teams, not a now defunct club being run by a despotic tycoon in Matra Racing Paris. Legend has it he only signed for them because he liked the idea of living in Paris, being cultured and all. After several seasons in the bottom half of Ligue 1 there and a year at Marseille he finally left for Italy, but this time just to little Cagliari (again allegedly because he fancied living in Sardinia because it's pretty there).
His goal scoring record there was noticeably worse than elsewhere, but this wasn't a bad spell of form: at Cagliari he was played as a central midfielder, which turned out to be a stroke of genius as he could tear apart almost any team with his vision, passing and dribbling. In his final season (the first season Italian football was on Channel 4) he helped Cagliari qualify for Europe in 6th place, a staggering achievement for a club of that size as Italian football was at its peak.
This video is a compilation of his time at Cagliari, mostly just his goals but there's some nice other bits as well:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V9GrohpLamc
and here's him taking the piss out of Poland (?!):
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oXJBk9Df-mE
NEXT UP: Ruud Gullit