By Ian Smith
When I was asked by @boropolis to do a piece on Juninho my initial feeling was one of caution. Not that I wouldn’t want to look back and put something together on quite simply the best player we’ve ever seen in a Middlesbrough shirt, my worry was how do you even add to what’s already a well told story (a magical one at that, too)?
His genius is well known.
Yet, despite this, I really wanted to write something a little more personal about how his arrival impacted me.
With that then, I set about sending myself back in time, back to the day when school playgrounds and Premier League sticker books were a big part of my life. Looking back to posters on bedroom walls and football just being everything to me – and how Juninho’s arrival sent my excitement levels up a fair few notches.
Sore Thumb
Growing up in Doncaster, the playground could be a lonely place when it came to footballing allies. With Liverpool and Manchester United dominating my fellow peers’ attention, and the likes of Sheffield Wednesday/United being quite well supported in the area too, for a Middlesbrough fan in this South Yorkshire town I had the feeling of being a very sore thumb sticking out in the crowd.
My Dad, born and bred in the Boro, had moved to Doncaster in the late 70’s. His separation from his roots only served to intensify his support for his beloved team, so much so that he managed to convert my Mum, who when they meet had been a Leeds fan!
Anyway, on the 29th December 1984 I came along, the second of two boys (my brother was born in 1982), and at this point it will have been decided – we were born into a religion.
That of course, was the religion of football, and more specifically Middlesbrough Football Club.
The ceremonial presentation of the shirt when I was barely old enough to string a sentence together (the Heritage Hampers years) confirmed my allegiance. From that day on there was no other club for me.
As years progressed through school, I had to endure many a baffled mate in the playground questioning my choice of player to shout loudly as I smashed a screamer home (or a window). You know, you pretend to be your heroes so you exclaim their name as you imagine yourself as them. There was a roster of players if you like, a number of whom were my favourites, and no doubt the sort of names you’d have heard regularly in the playgrounds of Middlesbrough.
Slaven, Hendrie, Ripley, Wilkinson, Moore, Mustoe to name but a few – they were my ‘go to’ names. Legends to me, but to everyone else they were nobodies. My mates were too busy with the likes of Rush, Fowler, Kanchelskis, Cole, Cantona and McManaman.
I was too consumed with my Ayresome Park favourites.
I’d even day dream about being a pupil at the school that resided next door to the old Boro ground as I walked down the cobbled road to those famous gates.
“Why can’t I go there, Dad? I bet they all love The Boro”
“Because we live about 90 miles away, son” – would come his reply.
Fair enough.
To be honest, by the time I’d reached the latter stages of primary school I kind of enjoyed being different to others and had grown to relish sticking up for my team when the predictable teasing from my classmates came. I’d got over feeling slightly put out, upset even, when doing swapsies in class, nobody valuing the Boro ‘shiny’ or getting excited when they received Curtis Fleming in their latest pack of stickers.
And what was about to follow changed everything.
Osvaldo Giroldo Junior
Having watched the most prestigious of international cup competitions, The Umbro Cup, I became aware of a player who would go on to be someone I’d be seeing a hell of a lot more of in the coming months.
Everybody loved watching Brazil. If it wasn’t the skills and goals of Romario or Bebeto, it was the pragmatism of Dunga or the wand of a left foot Roberto Carlos possessed that had kids idolising them.
I was no different.
USA ‘94, despite England’s lack of involvement, remains to this day one of my favourite World Cups. Partly because it’s the first one I can remember properly, but mainly down to watching the boys in yellow.
And on one day, the 11th June 1995 at Wembley, it was a little No. 10 that caught my eye.
Juninho was his name, and the free kick he put away against England as they ran out 3-1 winners was delightful. Even more so was the look of glee on his face.
He was being talked about in glowing terms. The current Brazilian Player of The Year, some accolade given the competition for such an award, it seems he’d caught the eye of a fair few scouts too, and one particular manager who was there that day sat on the England bench – Bryan Robson.
Part of Terry Venables coaching set-up, Robson had clearly seen enough at close quarters to be convinced that ambitious Boro should make a move. Riding the crest of a wave, Robson’s star was alluring to almost any player on the planet, and it seemed from that moment he was determined to get his man.
And so, it transpired.
Osvaldo Giroldo Junior (to give him his full title) arrived. I can still see the images now of him stepping off the plane at Teesside airport, the excitement palpable. Fans greeted him with Brazilian flags (such flags were soon to become commonplace amongst Boro fans in the coming years), and at the stadium there were dancers, people playing Samba music and even more fans in the West Stand cheering the signing of a new hero.
This was all new to us.
The unveilings you see nowadays, the likes of which Real Madrid are famed for, were an unfamiliar event to us on these shores, but here was Middlesbrough, fast becoming a club that was willing to break through barriers and be an unlikely trailblazer.
I’ll be honest, I couldn’t contain myself. I was just ten when he signed and when I thought bringing in Nick Barmby was pretty special, I clearly hadn’t anticipated us not only trumping that but absolutely smashing it out of the park.
This was huge, this was momentous. Ok, so he was new to England, he might take some time to adjust, but from that moment forward we all knew we were onto something quite magnificent. I couldn’t wait to see him in action.
Leeds United, at home, would provide me with my first glimpse of the man we’d soon come to adore. Clutching my Brazilian flag and trying to get my tongue round the motto on it (Ordem e Progresso), I took my usual match day position and waited for kick off. My Dad, not one to get himself too excited over such things, did his best to try and dampen the occasion:
“He’s too small, he’ll get kicked all over the place, we’ll see how long he lasts” – or words to that effect.
Well, having seen him look an absolute class apart on his debut, I think my Dad may have secretly been swallowing his words somewhat. The defence splitting pass for Jan Aage Fjortoft to run onto and finish beautifully was a real joy. From that moment on we all knew we had a superstar on our hands.
As the season went on, he showed signs of real, genuine world class talent, though this was tempered with natural signs of fatigue as he got used to the rigours of English football. Still, I’d seen enough to know that when I was on the playground at school, I now had a player in my armoury that could rival anything my mates could offer.
‘Second Team’
Whilst I didn’t abandon the more modest and perhaps less celebrated players within the squad, the fact was that this was a Boro team fast becoming something new, something special. People were starting to take notice, my friends would ask questions, query how a “team like Middlesbrough” managed to sign players like Juninho and Barmby.
There were the predictable comments that he was “shite” or “not that great”, purely based on the fact he didn’t play for anyone inside the top six, but that was inevitable. I’d put up with that sort of ignorance for years. My skin thickened, I enjoyed the eventful arguments in class about the teams we supported.
However, attitudes would eventually change when the likes of Fabrizio Ravanelli and Emerson joined the party in the summer of ‘96.
Almost overnight Middlesbrough became many people’s ‘second team’. The 3-3 draw on the opening day of the 1996/97 season seemed to catapult Boro into many football fans’ minds. Mates of mine would be happy to pull out a Boro player in a pack of stickers! (Well, as long as it was Juninho, Rav or Emerson)
I’d just started at secondary school at this point, not knowing what to expect as I met new pupils, made new friends. The support for certain teams continued, however there were the odd exceptions, such as the Leicester fan who would go on to give me so much stick I almost got upset following the League Cup Final. But in a funny sort of way I enjoyed the fact that there was someone else who supported an ‘unfashionable’ club. Kind of felt like I was no longer a lone target for teasing!
As the enthusiasm grew for a team from a small town on Teesside, The Little Fella was front and centre of everything that was positive emanating from the Club.
Now at this point it would sound incredibly harsh of me to suggest that we now suddenly had players we could be proud of because that would simply be untrue. That had always been the case for me. However, for a child growing up in an area where he had to battle to get his team noticed and talked about, having a player of Juninho’s obvious class certainly made my task that little bit easier.
I had to unsurprisingly deal with, and to a degree accept, reminders from friends that as soon as big team cam sniffing that Juninho would be off, but in a way I didn’t mind that, it showed that we’d arrived on the biggest of stages.
Demigod
As a kid, you didn’t care about tactics, systems and the like, all you wanted was entertainment, and watching Boro in that 96/97 season was just that – pure theatre.
With Juninho on our side it always felt like we had a chance of beating anyone. Watching him skip past players, nutmeg them, take them on again and again until they’d seen enough of him and they’d attempt to chop him down – but of course they rarely could. Even when they did, he would bounce back up, often giving his much larger opponent a stern talking to (just ask Phillipe Albert).
He was a maverick, a one off. And of course, when anyone thinks about that season, almost always their mind is catapulted to a moment of Juninho magic.
Whether it’s his goal at Nottingham Forest, or the way he brought the ball down from the air and pushed it past his opponent in one simultaneous movement against Newcastle in the FA Cup, a game where he was (like many others) the man of the match.
His header at home against Chelsea, the superb chipped finish in the cup at Derby. You could spend all day listing the moments that got you off your seat.
All this built him up to be some sort of demigod, and that’s what he truly felt like to me. I’d never seen anything like it. Which is why, when the horror of relegation came at Elland Road on that fateful afternoon, it wasn’t just Juninho who was shedding tears.
Sat there in my parent’s living room, willing us to do something to save the day, even the best efforts of our Brazilian maestro weren’t enough. Despite him getting on the scoresheet, he couldn’t inspire a result that would see us stay up. And as he sat, slumped in the centre circle, I cried too.
I was of course upset that my team had been relegated in the cruellest of fashions, the three point deduction condemning us. But I also saw how much it meant to a player who prior to joining us had had no connection, no knowledge of who we were, but here he was sat down inconsolable at the realisation that a team he’d grown to love were suffering.
I was also gutted because I knew he would likely be leaving.
My Dad, who can be the least understanding person at times when it comes to the feelings of a player and how they think, was pretty damning in his assessment of the situation.
“Ah that’s it then, I guess he’ll be off. If he were that bothered he’d stick around and help us get back up”.
He was right, he would be off, but you couldn’t deny him the opportunity of a big move. After all, it was the World Cup the following season; he needed to be playing at the highest of levels.
Such was the impact he had on us; I think we all felt the pain and anguish of a player who’d then be sidelined for the tournament following a terrible blow. A broken fibula was the result of a challenge on him by Celta Vigo’s Michel Salgado, Atletico Madrid’s big money signing now injured for the best part of six months.
That impact though, has lasted for over twenty years, and shows no sign of abating.
Boyish Enthusiasm
His two further spells at The Boro, on loan from Atletico in the 1998/99 season, as well as his permanent move back in 2002, have helped keep that fire burning, his love for our Club, a place he calls his “second home”, ensuring he’ll always have a place in our hearts.
He might not have been quite the same player, but there was still enough quality on display for him to stand out most weeks.
In fact, by the time he came back for his third spell I almost didn’t want him to return, such was the feeling that he’d fail to live up to expectations, his reputation somehow tarnished. I needn’t have worried.
Despite another cruel injury soon after joining, he went on to have a major role to play in the fortunes of the club. A comeback game in the reserves saw him play in front of a 20,000 crowd. Make no mistake, they were there for him.
And when success finally came, something he’d strived for so much in his first spell but ultimately missed out on, it was almost worth it just to see his face as he fell to his knees in Cardiff, but this time it was sheer joy, not agony.
Unlike the Coca Cola Cup Final in 1997, my face might not have been adorned in Juninho themed face paint, but that same boyish enthusiasm was still there. By 2004 I was a fully-fledged adult, but there was just something about Juninho that brought out the kid in me.
And it still does to this day. Naturally, you would think it’s because watching his first spell transports me back to being a 10/11 year old kid, and you’d be right. But those feelings of excitement, anticipation (even though you know what’s going to happen, you’ve seen the highlights a million times), it’s all still there.
I get giddy when I see him talk about Boro, I love to read his quotes on his time with us, and how he still looks out for our results every week.
I was there when he came back for ‘one final game’, almost a testimonial if you like. Sat in the crowd I knew I was watching a Juninho now well into his late 30’s, but I still couldn’t help getting those pangs of unbridled joy every time he got the ball at his feet. PSV, our opponents that day, didn’t quite read the script, but he still showed us flashes of the old magic.
Mates of mine have often joked that he’ll be back once more, mocking our relationship with one of our favourite adopted sons. It didn’t take long after he left for Boro in ‘97 for us to go back to being a team to be teased for supporting, and still to this day I have arguments and debate with friends on all things Boro, although these days they’re a lot more civilised and informed (mostly).
That all being said, his legacy lives on.
In a time where Middlesbrough are back on the periphery of the neutral conscience, it only takes a mention of Juninho for them to be reminded of the time Boro took their place among the very best this country has to offer.
If I’m ever asked who I support, be it by colleagues at work, or people I meet socially, they always turn the conversation to the Juninho era. And for those briefest of moments, I’m back there, back in the playground extolling the virtues of my team, playing my trump card which is of course The Little Fella. On those occasions it’s like I’m on a level playing field once more.
Much like Juninho often made it when we came up against the big boys.
