With this being the first in a year-long series celebrating Premier League legends now might be a good time to ask ourselves what exactly qualifies a player to be deserving of such a lofty status?
Longevity would be right up there as a factor but not exclusively so. Otherwise Mark Schwarzer would be a legend, Phil Neville too, and with the best will in the world they were not. Perhaps then longevity combined with consistent excellence above and beyond your peers? Now we’re getting warmer but again it doesn’t fully cover it.
A legend needs to stand out; to exhilarate and astonish and frankly there are a great many reliably excellent players who have showcased their talents in the top flight down the decades who are as far removed from legendary status as it’s possible to get.
I don’t recall former Sheffield Wednesday and Everton midfielder Mark Pembridge ever having a stinker, a player who let’s not forget turned out over 300 times in the Premier League and briefly went to Benfica to boot. So is he a legend? No, he is categorically not.
The criteria only gets more confusing when it’s considered who unquestionably is a ledge and that’s precisely why we’re debuting this series: not with obvious shouts like Paul Scholes or Thierry Henry, but by rejoicing in the existence of Faustino Hernan Asprilla.
Because the Colombian striker didn’t have longevity – he arrived on our shores wearing a fur coat in the midst of a North-East blizzard in February 1996 and departed less than two years later – and it would be a big stretch to claim he was consistently superb either. But he was certainly exhilarating and he could astonish too and what’s more he had that indefinable gift that kept on giving: he fascinated. And with that fascination myths grew around him.
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Let’s begin by dismissing some of those myths right off the bat. Contrary to popular belief the unconventional forward who was named the sixth best player in the world by FIFA in 1993 did not accidentally shoot his horse when pissed. Nor did he shoot it on purpose. There was no horse-shooting.
Nor was he nicknamed the ‘Octopus’ for his rubbery running style though in this instance you can see why people put two and two together and got five. It was actually due to his voracious appetite as a teen.
Most pertinently of all his signing did not cost Kevin Keegan’s Newcastle United the title in a year when it looked almost inevitability.
Yes it’s true that the Magpies had built up a significant lead over Manchester United as spring approached and perhaps too there is an argument that Asprilla unbalanced an attacking quartet of Ferdinand, Beardsley, Ginola and Gillespie that had previously scythed through defences with unrestrained glee.
But that narrative disregards a number of factors not least Keegan’s propensity to implode, United’s propensity to grind out wins like a machine, and the not-inconsiderable fact that Asprilla was pretty damn fantastic from the off. Indeed in his cameo debut outing against Middlesbrough he came on and helped turn the game around with two assists and this despite having downed a full glass of vino beforehand believing he had no part to play.
From there the boy from Tulua capitalised on how little defenders knew of him (for the record he was an influential figure in Parma’s UEFA Cup success in 1995 and scored 25 goals in 84 appearances in Serie A) and bamboozled one and all with his clever movement and ability to switch from languid feigned apathy to lightning in a bottle in a split second.
He was magnificent against Liverpool and he was everything against Manchester City but from both games combined the struggling Geordies amassed a singular point. Bluntly it really wasn’t his fault that Keegan was incapable of building a complete side and that the back-line was as porous as a sieve.
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Not that Asprilla was entirely blameless as Newcastle crumbled to eventually finish second. In that same match away to City he clashed nastily with Keith Curle while following a defeat at Arsenal he refused to listen to his manager’s scolding review and instead took off on a motorbike through the streets of London.
Here though is where we reach the strangest criteria for legendary status: such behaviour makes you loved. Perhaps it shouldn’t but in an anodyne world full of anodyne players it surely does.
So long of course as the strops and mood swings are levelled out with moments of pure joy and the following year, against Barcelona of all teams, Asprilla reserved his finest 90 minutes for his adoring public. A hat-trick in the Champions League consisting of a pen and two thunderous headers is rightly still talked about by the St James’ faithful and will forever remain the pinnacle of his folklore.
When Tino Asprilla joined a high-flying Newcastle in the mid-90s the Premier League was well staffed with foreign intrigues, to the extent where we were getting quite used to them. Yet still we had never before seen anything like him. That – and starting up a condom business in retirement – makes him a legend in anyone’s book.
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