Newcastle United: A legend to return?

By European Football
October 5 2005

One of my favourite players in my many years of watching Newcastle, Faustino Asprilla has announced that he would like to play his retirement game against Newcastle United. Asprilla may have only spent two years on Tyneside, but anyone that was there to witness his hatrick over Barcelona will have fond memories of the Colombian striker.
A game we were supposed to lose, a game no-one gave us a hope in hell of winning, a game that saw the likes of Figo at his peak, destroyed by the talent that was Asprilla.

Oh he could be erratic, just ask Columbian reporters, he could be frustrating at times, but he could also be magnificent, I adored his time with my club and wished him well long after.

And Tino did seem to be the sort of player that needed looking after, few of us can forget the Darlington fiasco, few of us could help laughing at it as well, cause only Tino would think it was a good idea to flee to the desert to avoid Darlington.

But now he feels its time to hang up his boots saying:

"Despite that I am okay and feel that I could keep on playing I think that the moment of saying goodbye has arrived.

"I am organising my tribute match together with the officials and people of Newcastle.

"We still haven't put a date to the match but I hope that I can invite some ex team-mates that I had in Universidad de Chile and other teams."

I for one will pay to see the great man just one more time.

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