The late-1990s, revolve around Denílson de Oliveira who is now the new world’s costliest footballer.

In two years paving the way to Denílson’s enormous move in 1998, the exchange record was broken multiple times, each time it happened for a striker: Ronaldo to Barcelona in 1996 after this, Alan Shearer to Newcastle and then, Ronaldo once more, In 1997 to inter.

Real Betis paid £21.5million to São Paulo for Denílson. It was £2million more than that paid to Ronaldo by Inter, yet the value of Denilson was in tricks and not goals.

Although in 1998, Denílson had scored only a few goals in four seasons in Brazil. He ran and also dribbled. He completed an entire pack of skills. It was almost never that he scored.

Manuel Ruiz de Lopera, who at that point was the President of Real Betis, was apparently on top of things: like a high school FIFA fiend in 2018, the president was impressed by the amazing footwork of the Brazilian player, maybe giving too little attention to that dreaded footballing method of ‘end product’, however, he was sure about his new star’s capacity to resist the opposition with chops and stepovers.

Individuals didn’t truly trust Denílson would be one of the world’s hottest prospects.

In June, 1998, before the World Cup took place in France, Ronaldo was tipping his partner to be a star of the competition.

Brazilian mentor Mario Zagallo, while reluctant to utilize Denílson in his beginning lineup, also talked up the capacity of the record-breaking winger.

“Denílson is a noteworthy player, somebody who can do the unforeseeable and harm the opponents all of a sudden,” he said. Further, he added that they will utilize him when they will.