The Joy of Six: big money debuts

1) Jonathan Woodgate, REAL MADRID 3-1 Athletic Bilbao, September 22 2005
"Fuck me, what a debut!" Jonathan Woodgate's appraisal, on these pages, after his long-awaited first game for Real Madrid, pretty much said it all. At the start of the game he was as happy as Larry; by the end, he was as happy as Larry David. And the delirious farce in between would not have looked out of place in an episode of Curb Your Enthusiasm.
Woodgate had spent 561 days recovering from injury and growing his hair before finally making his Real debut. And then the most macabre shambles unfolded. First Woodgate sent a flying header into his own net; then, after 66 minutes, he received a dodgy second yellow card and was sent off. Woodgate left the field to rapturous applause from a crowd who knew a cult hero when they saw one. Despite that, less laid-back characters would have wanted to lay back and think of England, but Woodgate took it on the chin and got on with the business of building a successful Real Madrid career. He failed, obviously, and ended up at Middlesbrough, but three points for trying.
2) Erik Thorstvedt, TOTTENHAM HOTSPUR 1-2 Nottingham Forest, January 15 1989
At £400,000, Thorstvedt wasn't a big signing in a fiscal sense, but he was a huge signing in another sense: in the eighties in England foreign goalkeepers were rarer than hairspray-free bathrooms and women who didn't secretly think they could tame Dirty Den, so it ostensibly represented a significant gamble by Terry Venables. Even more so when, after five minutes of his debut, Thorstvedt let a rudimentary long-ranger from Nigel Clough go through him like a dose of salts – or, as the Babelfish translation of this biography of Thorstvedt put it, "Tottenham lost and the Norwegian broke into a flause of a shot from Nigel Clough."
Thorstvedt's humiliation was compounded by the fact that the game was live on ITV. At the time, the Sunday afternoon game, with Elton Welsby - and, if you were really lucky, Greavsie - was a significant social event, like the drive-thru in the sixties or the backslapping dinner party in the noughties. Tel Boy must have thought he'd bought some hooky goods off the back of a lorry, and the press, gleefully certain of the superiority of British goalkeepers – good call, eh boys – ridiculed him brutally. But Thorstvedt overcame his false start to become a hugely popular and successful figure at Spurs. He certainly didn't break into a flause of too many other shots. 3) Alan Shearer, Crystal Palace 3-3 BLACKBURN, August 15 1992
It sounds absurd now, but the signing of Alan Shearer wasn't the absolute banker that became apparent after, ooh, 90 minutes of his Blackburn career. He had no more than a decent scoring record at a good but mid-table Southampton side, and had only played in one of England's three Euro 92 games. Shearer had rejected Manchester United (second in Division One the previous season) in favour of Blackburn (sixth in Division Two) for reasons that were never divulged – a desire to play alongside Nicky Marker and Mark Atkins was presumably high on the list – but it soon became clear that here was the sort of unstoppable talent that could almost single-handedly drag a mediocre team into a position to challenge for honours. His two debut goals, in a cracking 3-3 draw at Crystal Palace, were stunners. The first came when the ball bounced up 20 yards out and Shearer lashed it high into the net; the second, after he pursued a Garryowen ball to the left wing all on his own, was a sumptuous curler into the far corner that gathered force like a rising tide. As did Shearer. He is, absurdly, best remembered for a largely mediocre spell at Newcastle, but at Blackburn? Bloody hell. See both goals after 3:40 of this video.
4) Jay-Jay Okocha, Bordeaux 3-1 PARIS ST GERMAIN, August 8 1998
When you sign a showman like Jay-Jay Okocha, you expect him to put on a show. But not necessarily after 90 seconds. That's how long it took Okocha, after coming off the bench, to score this simply remarkable goal on his PSG debut, jinking past two players before lacing a 30-yard stunner into the top corner.
Okocha had joined for around £14m, a record for an African player, and even though PSG were beaten 3-1 in that game – with another debutant and future Premiership player, Bordeaux's Ali Benarbia, running the show – their fans went home talking about only one thing. 5) Massimo Taibi, Liverpool 2-3 MANCHESTER UNITED, September 11 1999
The misery of Massimo Taibi's Manchester United career doesn't really need any embellishing, yet there are myriad internet sites that refer to him having a stinker on his debut at Liverpool and being at fault for both goals.
This is gash. Taibi might have had egg on his face later on for his infamous howlers against Southampton and Chelsea, but at Anfield his performance was more of a curate's egg: one grisly error to give Liverpool their opening goal; four outstanding saves to earn Sky's Man of the Match award. He was also the Man of the Match in United's next game, against Wimbledon, which makes it quite an achievement of incompetence that his Old Trafford career only lasted a further 15 days.
6) Fabrizio Ravanelli, MIDDLESBROUGH 3-3 Liverpool, August 17 1996
If there is an English precedent for the Robinho signing, it is probably this: a small club with loadsamoney buying one of Europe's more high-profile talents. Ravanelli had scored in the European Cup final the previous season, which Juventus won on penalties against Ajax. So even though he was the highest-paid player in the league, his decision to join Middlesbrough was revelatory.
So was his debut. Three times Boro went behind; three times the White Feather tickled the undercarriage of a typically tender Liverpool defence. All were archetypal goalscorer's goals: the first a penalty, the second touched in from two yards out and the third drifted into the corner on the turn, each one followed by that famous shirt-over-the-head celebration. Yet as the weeks went by, Ravanelli might have wanted to bury his head in his hands when he realised what he'd done: despite scoring 31 goals that season, Middlesbrough were relegated, and he did one to Marseille.