By DPA,
Rio de Janeiro : Veteran Brazilian striker Romario has put an end to his career, but not to his characteristic verbosity: he confessed to having sex on a plane during a trip with the Brazilian national team, and claimed he thinks he is “better than Pele”.
In comments to the TV programme Fantastico, on the channel Rede Globo, the small-built Romario, 42, said late Sunday that he had sex on a plane.
“I did it when I started out at the national team, in the first trip. I cannot remember exactly when. We took a plane in Switzerland, and the rest was just that,” the former striker said.
Romario – who by his own controversial count scored over 1,000 goals in his long career – insisted that he was “the best of them all” inside the box.
“Since I did not see Pele play, I think I am better than him. I also know that there is only one Pele. There is only one Maradona. And Romario is unique. I do not see a successor. Inside the box I was the best of them all,” he said.
Romario – who retired early this month – laughed as he recalled that he “ran away” from team lock-ins whenever he could, both with Brazil and with the clubs he played for.
“At (the game between) Brazil and Uruguay in 1993 I ran away from the hotel and went to a different one. In the Copa America, outside Brazil, in Bolivia, I ran away too,” he said.
“In the 1994 (World) Cup I left the hotel at least twice to go for a walk. I was always one to escape. Nobody knew about it. I did not even see it myself!” he laughed.
Romario – who has five children – said he underwent a vasectomy but does not rule out having another child, given that he kept samples of his own semen at a laboratory just in case.
The thousand-goal-man admitted that he gets very “nervous” when he has to board a plane, that he is scared of getting a fish bone stuck in his throat and that he would rather see dogs from afar (“me here, them over there”).
Romario played for Vasco da Gama, among other Brazilian clubs, and for PSV Eindhoven, Barcelona and Valencia, as well as for clubs in the US Qatar and Australia.