When Ronaldo & Romario were the most thrilling partnership on the planet

For me and, I imagine, for many of those taking the time to read this, few things in life are as heart-warming as a fully functional strike partnership.

Forward duos come in many shapes and sizes, but all share one key element: two players acutely aware of their reliance on one another – their coordinated movements, lay-offs and interplay – for the goals that put food in their stomachs and joy in their hearts.

Strike partnerships distil football’s essence. There can never be individual glory without collective synergy.

And for those of us fond of the attacking double act, the 1990s were extremely kind. Sutton and Shearer, Yorke and Cole. Look to Serie A and you might have glimpsed Inzaghi and Del Piero or Crespo and Chiesa. At international level there was Klinsmann and Bierhoff or Bergkamp and Kluivert.

But divert your glare a little further afield and there was a double-act to blow all others out of the water.

It was fleeting and, as a national team partnership that never went to a World Cup, often overlooked. Yet Ronaldo and Romario, for a single calendar year in 1997, obliterated all that was put ahead of them. Less big man-little man, more genius-phenomenon.

In a veritable splurge of international fixtures, Brazil played 26 times in the year, of which Romario and Ronaldo started 16 together. In those 16 matches, the Selecao scored 52 goals, 31 coming from the Ro-Ro front two. There were three assists from Rom to Ron and nine from Ron to Rom. And, propelled by that debauched, hedonistic spree of goal-scoring, Brazil lifted two trophies in six months.

After the 1994 World Cup win, Romario had spent two and a half years out of the national team picture as manager Zagallo looked to blood youngsters for 1998. In the meantime, Ronaldo had gone about establishing himself as the team’s first-choice striker. When Romario returned in February 1997, it did not take long for master and apprentice to hit it off.

The first unfortunate victims were Poland, who travelled to Goias in the west of Brazil on what one can only imagine was a debilitatingly hot summer night. Their reward for their intrepidness was to be swept aside by a 20-year-old in the sweet spot of the season of his life.

Just a few minutes in, Ronaldo picked the ball up in the centre circle and threaded an inch-perfect ball through to his Barcelona team-mate Giovanni, who did the rest. Then, after Giovanni had bagged a second, O Fenomeno added two of his own. For both, Romario dropped in to…