Before Haaland and Alexander Isak were the creme de la creme of European strikers, before Suarez, Benzema, Lewandowski, Kane and others presented themselves as the pinnacle of what a modern-day number 9 could be, there was a certain centre-forward who struck fear into any backline across the continent.

There was a small period of time prior to the explosions of the aforementioned, where Radamel ‘El Tigre’ Falcao reigned supreme in Europe. My earliest memories of football are blurry, but one thing I can vividly recollect was the undeniability of the Colombian striker from 2010 to 2013.

At both Porto and Atletico Madrid, Falcao was unplayable. 72 goals in 86 games in Portugal followed by 70 in 91 in the Spanish capital. But you have to do more than just scour his stats on Fotmob to appreciate just how good he was during this period.

Falcao was as complete as a number 9 could get, when I began to get into football, it seemed he was the benchmark for what any great striker could be. Thunderbolt volleys; free-kicks whipped into the top stanchion from 25 yards out; cute first-timed chips dumbfounding the keeper; obscene headers… there was no type of goal he couldn’t score.

If you want one game to epitomise the player that Falcao was, search up the 2012/13 UEFA Super Cup in which Atletico Madrid were up against the current Champions League winners in Chelsea. Falcao scored a superb first half hat-trick including a disgusting curled shot from just inside the edge of the box on his weaker left-foot, leaving the legendary Petr Cech looking like he’d just seen a ghost.

Well, I say weaker but the truth is Falcao could finish just as well on his left or right peg and if you were to watch a compilation of the forward’s greatest goals, you’d struggle to realise which foot he actually preferred. Not one who particularly cared for dropping deep and linking with this midfielders, Falcao was more of a battering-ram packed into a 5ft10 frame and a cocky disregard for any centre-backs trying to impose themselves physically on him.

One of the greatest goalscorers of the 21st century in his prime, Falcao’s best years featured achievements such as finishing 5th in the Ballon d’Or in 2012 and also featuring in the Fifa FiFPro World11, scoring the most goals ever in a Europa league campaign with an unfathomable 17 and being the only player to win consecutive Europa Leagues with two different clubs. Chances are he would’ve had a few La Liga golden boots to his name if it wasn’t for two aliens also playing in the same league as he finished 3rd in the scoring charts in the 11/12 and 12/13 campaigns.

Falcao’s minute to goal ratio across his whole career is better than a lot of forwards who are reminisced on a lot more fondly than the Colombian. His rate of a goal every 118 minutes trumps the likes of Henry, Benzema and Salah across their careers whilst his historic rate of scoring a goal every 85 minutes from 2009-2013 is only bested by Messi, Suarez and Lewandowski across any 4 year period in the last 20 years.

All of these stats and accolades point towards someone that should be considered in the same breath as some of the most notable strikers this century, especially when considering their primes. But Falcao’s name is turning into an uncommon sound as time goes on and so the question beckons as to why.

For me, there’s two obvious reasons. In England us fans have a habit to skate over all the great things a player has done abroad if they failed to succeed in the Premier League. Falcao is a huge victim of this. When he arrived from Monaco to Manchester United, there were huge expectations but ‘El Tigre’ never really found his feet, scoring 4 times in the 14/15 season and only once in his extremely forgetful stint at Chelsea. So that massively jeopardised his reputation in this country, but this also ties into the second and most important reason as to why Falcao is slowly being forgotten.

From 2006/07 to 2010/11, Colombia’s all time top scorer was out for a total of 173 days due to injury. That’s over a month missed per season, not the greatest record but certainly not worthy of the ‘injury prone’ label. From 2012/13 to 2017/18, Falcao was sidelined for an insane 542 days, an average of over 3 months per campaign. In his first season at Monaco in 13/14, Falcao tore his ACL and never quite recovered back to the level he was before it. After this injury and for the rest of his career, Falcao was often on the receiving end of little niggles that would keep him out for a month or two on end, making it extremely hard to get back into the flow of things, His hamstrings slowly turned into mush and he lost that explosiveness and robustness that previously made the forward so hard to contain.

So these injury woes were a large reason for Falcao’s shortcomings in England. If it weren’t for that ACL suffered in France, who knows what he would’ve been able to do in the Prem with the likes of Di Maria and Rooney in behind him. A groin injury at Chelsea also kept him out for over half of the season and Falcao was labelled as a huge flop, without anyone caring to put any context behind this. Not to mention the Chelsea and United teams he joined were going through some of their worst seasons in modern history and the atmosphere around them was as toxic as it could possibly have been.

However, the striker moved back to Monaco after his Great British nightmare and although the Falcao of old was gone, he was able to gather all his IQ and talent and put together two and a half fantastic years in the south of France. Finally untroubled by injuries again, Falcao’s diminished physicality paved the way for his brain to take the lead. His positioning and reading of the game became stronger whilst his finishing ability had evidently not strayed too far. Backed up by upcoming superstar athletes like Lemar, Mbappe, Silva and others who did all the running for him, Falcao could get back to doing what he did best and that’s exactly what he did.

30 in 43 in 2016/17 and 24 in 36 in 2017/18, being part of the infamous Monaco team who went on that historic UCL run and were also one of two sides to finish ahead of PSG in Ligue 1 in nearly 15 years. Falcao reinvented himself. He overcame the most difficult time in his professional career to round off a spectacular 7 or 8 years at the top of European football. A fairytale story and the mark of a true legend of the game.

Football will always move forward, sometimes faster than we’d like. If we don’t take a second to stop and appreciate the former great stars of our time, we run the risk of forgetting them altogether. Falcao, like many others, should always have a place in any football-lover's brain who can remember just how good he was at one point. Just because it didn’t work out in England, we can’t turn our noses up at what is one of the greatest careers of a number 9 in the 21st century.

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