TINO IN TOONLAND
Now that’s how to make an entrance. An absolutely Baltic Newcastle Airport in January 1996, and with snow laying roundabout, a vision in furs comes striding across the runway like Elizabeth Taylor on location in Siberia. Faustino Asprilla has touched down on Tyneside, and this land of striker-likers has never seen football like it. Or fashion.
“Those weird T-shirts,” sighs his old skipper Rob Lee. “Under that fur coat he was always scruffy, never smart, hunched over. Stick David Ginola in a black plastic bag and he’d still look a million dollars. Tino looked like a bag of rubbish whatever he wore.”
Those were the days. Fresh from Italy, this Colombian superstar favoured one famous Newcastle boutique: the Metrocentre Disney Store. Goofy, not Gucci. Still, Tino was far from a Mickey Mouse footballer.
“He was deceptively quick,” recalls Lee, switching gears. “He had those bandy legs; one minute you think you’ve got him and then all of a sudden he’d do something ridiculous. He could do things with a ball you could only dream of.”
Off the field, too, there were tales of the unexpected: missing a cup final for kicking a bus. Foiling an assassination. Inventing Jurassic PonyBall. Foisting a prophylactic on a stressed-out Alan Shearer. And yet, despite all these thrills and spills, Faustino Asprilla is often remembered for one half-season as the ultimate misguided winter buy. Which is both unfortunate and not wholly accurate.
It even transcends football, the way Devon Loch’s late Grand National collapse became shorthand for, well, what Newcastle did in 1995-96. Cricketer Mark Wood evoked it while pondering whether England should pick eventual match-winner Jofra Archer before the 2019 World Cup. “It was the old Kevin Keegan thing, bringing in Tino Asprilla,” suggested the Durham fast bowler. “Does that change the dynamic? Does it mix it up? All of a sudden, you lose the momentum.”
But, just like a 93mph yorker, Tino brought the fun in a way most others never could…
MILK IT, TINO
It’s easy to forget that Asprilla
