Real Madrid: Ranking the 5 best players of the ’90s

2. RAUL GONZALEZ

Raul Gonzalez had a special career, he started young and made his mark on not one but two decades at Real Madrid. Playing his football between 1992 and 2010, Raul is another player who came as a savior to Real Madrid while their Vulture’s Cohort was dismantled with a few key departures that I mentioned in the previous slides.

Raul was born in Madrid in 1977. A local lad, he started playing football initially with Los Rojiblancos before Real Madrid noticed his talent and signed him for their youth team in the 1992/23 season. He was a quick success there and in no time Jorge Valdano debuted him for the first team on October 29, 1994. A week later he scored in the Madrid derby against his former outfit and became a key contributor to Real’s LaLiga triumph that season breaking FC Barcelona’s streak of winning the league four consecutive times.

He then went on to win another league title in 1996 before lifting his first of the three European Cups in 1998. He scored in the two later finals in 2000 and 2003 in the subsequent decade. He remains the player with the most number of appearances for Real Madrid with 741 official appearances whilst scoring 323 goals. He is also one of the few players to have surpassed 100 caps for the Spanish National side where he was a key player of the side for years.

An absolute threat in front of goal, Raul was a player gifted with brilliant instincts inside the box. He’d hop on to rebounds and give it all out on the pitch. Today, he remains one of the club’s eternal icons whose association with the club is only strengthening every passing day. He has put up a brilliant project with the Castilla side in the second division and all signs points towards him becoming the first-team manager someday and repeating a feat similar to Zinedine Zidane’s.