Player profile: the criminally underrated atomic mouse Rui Barros | OneFootball

Rui Barros in his Juventus days

The Atomic mouse. The Speedy Gonzalez of Portuguese football. At a time when Portuguese players weren’t fashionable, Rui Barros broke barriers in the most iconic football league in the world. A career that started like thunder, from his surprise coming of age at Porto to a brilliant period abroad, then to return home to be part of the Dragons iconic Penta cycle.

The only thing missing was to play for Portugal on a big stage. Mexico 1986 was too early for him and Euro 1996 came to late and that, perhaps, contributed to some neglecting his name and legacy, but make no mistake. There were few Portuguese icons as big as the Paredes prodigy.

From sleepy village to the big city

Paredes now sits half an hour away from Porto and has become a favoured choice for many who work in downtown Porto but can’t pay the housing prices set by the current market. A direct train connects both cities and almost every day it is usually fully packed. Sixty years ago, it was a very different affair. Paredes was not only nothing but a small village, on the outskirts of Penafiel, but the road connection to Porto was poor and took forever. In the 1960s the region that later became known as the Ave valley was essentially rural and detached from the urban setting on the coastline. Its inhabitants lived a life more similar to Portugal’s often abandoned interior and had little in common with the cosmopolitan spirit of today.

It was in that setting that Rui Barros was born on 24 November 1965. Portugal was half a year away from performing at their very best in the World Cup set in England and José Maria Pedroto was about to be named FC Porto manager for the first of his three stints at the club. Few could imagine that boy would become one of the most coveted footballers in the world and by the time he was a teenager.

With the textile industry quickly reshaping the local landscape, there were still some doubts about whether he would thrive as a footballer. Jaime Pacheco, who also came from the area, had moved from Aliados de Lordelo to FC Porto when the young Barros came out to try himself in the youth side of the small Paredes club. He then moved to Rebordosa, another small village on the outskirts of Paredes and then, in 1982, to the bigger club of Paços de Ferreira, who were yet to be promoted to the first tier for the first time.

Those were the years where all those northern clubs you now associate with the Portugal’s top football division began to make a name for themselves. It was from their youth academies that clubs like Porto usually nabbed some players. They did just that with Rui Barros. It was the summer of 1983, and Pinto da Costa was preparing to start his second season as club president. Scouts were usually sent to the areas surrounding Porto and one in particular, Mister Hernani, came back with a name on a blank sheet: Rui Barros.

Successive loans

He had travelled to Paços to watch a couple of other players he had heard about but quickly became mesmerised by the sheer speed and talent of a very short-sized Rui. Some raised an eyebrow. He didn’t seem to have the physicality required to become a first division footballer but he was given a trial, nonetheless. Hours later it became clear he was to be signed immediately. After spending a season in the youth side, where he was league champion, aged 19, Rui Barros was loaned to Sporting Covilhã for the 1984/85 campaign. In his professional debut season things went quite well in the Serra da Estrela. He played 25 matches and netted a respectable five goals to help the side get promoted to the top tier.

When he came back, Artur Jorge felt he was still in need of more playing time. With Porto moving to sign Rabah Madjer and Juary to join Paulo Futre and Fernando Gomes, the young prospect was loaned to Varzim, closer to home, and also playing in the second tier. At Povoa de Varzim he stayed for two seasons, impressing the local crowd by also helping them ascend to the first division, then making his debut in the top league on his second season.

Grabbing his chance

By the summer of 1987 it was a make-or-break moment in his career. By then 21, and with Artur Jorge moving to Paris, he was called up to take part in the Porto’s pre-season with the new manager, the Croatian Tomislav Ivic. The side had just been crowned European champions so many were doubtful that the young forward would have it in him to meet the required standard for a first team position, but with Futre gone and Ivic believing Gomes was aging, he passed the test.

His impact was immediate. Barros scored 12 goals and became a worldwide figure after his brilliant display against Ajax in the European Super Cup, scoring the winner in Amsterdam after missing several other chances that he himself had created almost from nothing. He was also in the Tokyo side that won the Intercontinental crown under a blanket of snow and by the end of the year he proved key for Porto to clinch both the league and the cup trophies to make it a memorable campaign. Porto supporters were expecting him to stay for another campaign, but the Agnelli family was looking for a successor to Michel Platini and Rui Barros seemed the right man for the job. Juventus approached Porto with an offer they couldn’t refuse and a year after Futre left for Atlético Madrid, Barros also moved abroad, to Serie A.

A hit in Turin

In Turin, Rui Barros found a side that had dominated Italian football in the first part of the decade and would do so again in the later part of the 1990s. He came in a pre-war period of sorts, as Juventus were trying to find a shift from the Trapattoni and Platini era while competing with the likes of Maradona’s Napoli, Sachi’s Dutch inspired AC Milan and the German connection under Il Trap at Inter. With smaller sides like Sampdoria, AS Roma and Atalanta always putting up a fight, it was no coincidence that Serie A was considered the best league in the world by a mile.

Barros was initially offered the number 10 shirt, orphaned since Platini left, but he preferred to stick with his favoured number 8. For two seasons he played almost a hundred matches for the Vechia Signora, netting almost twenty goals, including an Italian Cup and UEFA Cup win in 1990. By then he already knew Juventus had decided to sign Roberto Baggio, who played against him in that final with Fiorentina, so he understood the time had come to move on without a fuss. The tiffosi loved him – he had been the sole foreigner to perform to expectations after the Frenchman’s departure with the likes of Sergei Aleinikov, Aleksander Zavarov and Michael Laudrup failing to impress – but the appeal of Baggio was simply too big, particularly after his display at the World Cup.

More adulation in Monaco

Rui Barros was a big player over three seasons at Monaco

Arsene Wenger came into the picture, quickly understanding that Barros was the sort of player he would be in need for his AS Monaco project, particularly after the British duo of Chris Waddle and Gleen Hoddle left. Alongside the as yet unknown striker George Weah, Barros became a formidable forward for the Monaco side for the following three seasons as he peaked in Ligue 1. He became one of the most beloved players in the league and even if Bernard Tapie’s Marseille always seemed to come out on top in the league table, Monaco provided some of the most spectacular football on display in the country.

Barros also helped them claim the French cup and then led Monaco to the Cup Winners Cup final played in Lisbon. Days before a tragic event at Bastia, which caused the death of several local supporters in a Cup semi-final, disturbed the Monaco squad who weren’t at their best and eventually lost to Werder Bremen. Still, it was a brilliant side that included several future World Champions for France such as Emmanuel Petit, Liliam Thuram and Youri Djorkaeff, who later said he had in Barros a sort of maestro in his early days as a first-team player.

Caught up in Marseille scandal

In 1993 Marseille finally clinched the European Cup and Bernard Tapie thought it was time to prepare a revolution in the side. He signed the two Portuguese international superstars: Paulo Futre from Atlético Madrid and Rui Barros from Monaco. Both players, who knew each other well from their days playing for the national side, however found a club on the brink of an emotional meltdown. After they signed, OM were found guilty of attempted bribery in Ligue 1 and they were stripped of the title, while UEFA barred them from taking part in the following season’s Champions League or representing Europe in the Intercontinental trophy.

Tapie was arrested, Marseille was booed at every away match, while Wenger claimed that all the leagues he had lost in the previous years should be stripped from Marseille as well. The club did finish second, owing much to Barros’ displays – Futre was recurrently sidelined by injury – but they were relegated nonetheless at the end of the campaign. The time had come for the prodigal son to return home.

Happy homecoming

By the summer of 1994 Bobby Robson was preparing a revolution at Porto. He had been signed months earlier with the side lagging third on the league table and managed to finish second, win the Cup against his former club Sporting and guide the Dragons to the Champions League semi-finals. With Emil Kostadinov moving away after a brilliant World Cup, Pinto da Costa managed to rescue Barros from French football and the Paredes hero became one of the stalwarts of the five-consecutive league wins by Porto.

Rui Barros celebrates after his last match, the Portuguese Cup final replay against Sporting, which Porto won 2-0. (Photo: Nuno Correia, Allsport)

Operating as a sole striker, partnering the likes of Domingos Paciência, Sergei Yuran, Ljubinko Drulović or Edmilson, or even moving into midfield, Barros was decisive in the following campaigns and even when the club signed the likes of Mário Jardel, Artur and Zlatko Zahovič, his contribution, albeit diminished, was never questioned. When Porto claimed the league title at Alvalade in 1999, he was one of five players who had taken part in all five league trophies won in a row alongside Aloísio, Jorge Costa, António Folha and Ljublinko Drulovic. He retired the following campaign, aged 35, with a total of six Portuguese league wins, a UEFA Cup for Juventus, a European Super Cup an Intercontinental trophy for the Dragons and a Cup Winners Cup runners-up medal. No other Portuguese footballer of his generation had such a rich curriculum.

The only thing missing was playing in a big competition for Portugal. He had made his debut in 1987, on the back of his brilliant stint at Varzim, at a time when several top players were still under punishment for the Mexico 1986 Saltillo affair and said his goodbyes nine years later. Some expected António Oliveira to call him up for the Euro 1996 finals, as he had been part of the qualifying, but in the end the manager decided to go with Paulo Alves and Ricardo Sá Pinto instead. As a reward, Oliveira’s successor in the job, Artur Jorge, called him for a World Cup qualifier against Germany later that year. It was the last time he wore in national team colours.

Undestated but beloved club servant

After his playing days were over, Barros remained an ever-present figure at Porto. He was appointed caretaker manager in 2006 after Co Adriaanse resigned, winning the Portuguese Super Cup, and again in 2016. He coached the B-side years later, also making up part of the coaching staff for several Porto managers over the past two decades.

Never outspoken, not very friendly with the press, Barros never got the sort of public recognition his career deserved. He belonged to that generation stuck between the brilliant group of players of the early 1980s and the Golden Generation that dominated Portuguese football in the following decade. He was not as flashy as Paulo Futre, whom he shared many adventures with, but he probably had a better career than the brilliant winger looking in retrospective. Either way, few players are as beloved as him at Porto and he remains a club icon today, one that represents the transformation of FC Porto and, indeed, Portuguese football, in the last fifteen years of the 20th century.