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Faustino Asprilla Gallery
This page is devoted to images of Faustino Asprilla, my favourite Newcastle Utd player of all time.
Although we won nothing when Tino was with us, due to the fact that Dalglish took over from Keegan and set us back about 6 years (prompting Tino to seek his fortunes elsewhere) his moments of brilliance live long in the memory. El Pulpo (as he is known back in Columbia, The Octopus, due to his bizarre rubber-legged style) became an instant crowd favourite at St James' Park. Although he could be equally as frustrating as he was creative, it was the 'factor X' that he brought to a game which drew Keegan to sign him for us, the ability held by only a few players to turn a game on a sixpence and make something out of less than nothing.
He plays football like he's having a kick-around in his own backyard, no hurry, rolling the ball around and picking his pass. He was often accused by casual followers as being lazy, but if you ever watched him off the ball he worked hard making space and was lightning quick, with a cat-like agility which meant that he could bring a difficult aerial ball down with either foot and pass it first time to Shearer, Ferdinand or (latterly, and sadly) Tomasson.
Pele rates him as 'one of the truly creatively gifted players of his generation' and Zola is clear in his admiration of his former Parma team-mate, their strike partnership winning Parma the Serie A title before we bought him.
Keegan stated, after paying £7.5 million for him, that 'when a work of art comes on the market, you don't ask how much it's worth, you just buy it'. A true Keegan player, an entertainer of the highest quality, and after our 3-2 beating of Barcelona after his tremendous hat-trick, a toon legend.
Ron Atkinson once said, 'I've seen a lot of players train in my time, some world class ones too, but he's something else. This guy performs moments of pure skill that I've never seen anybody try in training never mind during a game; this lad Asprilla just does things with a football which make you glad to be alive'.
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