Barcelona Former Celta defender recalled incident with the Brazilian
One of Argentina‘s truly great central defenders, Fernando Caceres has admitted that during his spell with Celta Vigo he was offered 500,000 pesetas to take Ronaldinho out of a match with Barcelona.
Caceres left his mark on teams like River Plate, Boca Juniors and Real Zaragoza, in addition to Celta, and was also involved at international level with Argentina on numerous occasions.
“We were playing Celta vs Barcelona in Vigo and on the first touch Ronaldinho tried to make, I hit him from behind,” Caceres explained in an interview with the ‘Idolos’ YouTube channel.
“I helped him up and told him I’d been offered 500,000 pesetas to take him out.
“He just looked at me and said, ‘if you can catch me’.
“I didn’t go to mark him anymore. I was scared, he was angry and when he got like that, he was very good; a strong and impressive player.”
Having been a teammate of Diego Maradona with Argentina, Caceres finds it difficult to compare the Napoli legend and Lionel Messi.
“It’s very difficult to choose between one of the other, the times are different and the football is too,” he added.
“Luckily, I never faced Messi, but I would have found it challenging to deal with the things he can do with the ball.
“You see them and you can’t believe it. When Leo runs at you, what do you do? You don’t know, so you have to just kick him – it’s the only solution you have.”
Caceres was part of the Argentina squad that travelled to the United States for the 1994 World Cup, which is remembered for the positive drug test given by Diego Maradona, a discovery that ended his international career.
“Diego spoke to all of us and told us that he hadn’t done the things they said, then in the press they only spoke of Diego’s positive doping test,” he confirmed.
“That caused us a major distraction.
“We then had to play Romania whilst distracted and it took us out of the World Cup.”
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