Remembering Fabián O’Neill in 3 Games

Fabián O’Neill was one of the most gifted players to grace Serie A in the 1990’s. Zinedine Zidane, briefly the Uruguayan’s teammate at Juventus, described him as ‘the most talented player I have played with’, therefore placing his abilities above those of players such as Alessandro Del Piero, Ronaldo or Luis Figo. Whilst O’Neill is a familiar name to Sardinians, owing to his four seasons at Cagliari between 1996 and 2000, his flashes of genius from attacking midfield are mostly only known by Calcio aficionados. This article seeks to place focus on O’Neill’s footballing gifts, by highlighting three games in Italy where his sporting story can be told most clearly.

Looking back at these games has added poignancy considering Fabián O’Neill died on Christmas Day, 2022 at the age of 49. No one should die at 49 and the early loss of one of Serie A’s most gifted players of the 1990’s hit home to the football world during the festive period.

O’Neill was an alcoholic. The disease ended his career at 29 and his life twenty years later. Amid the tributes to ‘El Mago’ were tales from his eventful years on the planet – working as a child outside a brothel or losing thousands of dollars bidding, whilst drunk, during a cattle auction. These, for me, serve to deflect attention from the huge footballing talent he possessed and can trivialise the genuine human tragedy that is his passing.

Alcoholism has, unfortunately, claimed another footballing talent far too young. By looking at O’Neill’s exploits on the pitch, we can draw the human tragedy that is his untimely passing into clear focus.

Cagliari 3 Salernitana 1 

To paraphrase an expression from the great Oscar Wilde, To be nutmegged once may be regarded as a misfortune; to be twice looks like carelessness but… three times is, well, humiliating.

A young Gennaro Gattuso was afforded this honour at the hands of O’Neill when he took the trip to Sardinia with Salernitana in May 1999. What makes this feat all the more incredible is that it was, allegedly, pre-determined as a bet to his Uruguay teammate, Paolo Montero who suggested that O’Neill wouldn’t dare to try his tricks against the aggressive Italian midfielder.

The first of Gattuso’s humiliations came early in the game. O’Neill took a long ball down on his chest on the left flank, moved away from two markers and then flummoxed Gattuso with a dummied pass. The Italian hardman brought down O’Neill for his troubles. 

Before nutmeg number two occurred by the iconic Cagliari Number 10, he made his most telling contribution to the match. Again, faced by two markers and with Gattuso approaching with menace, O’Neill nonchalantly scooped a twenty yard through ball to Patrick M’Boma who put the ball past Daniele Balli.

Cagliari would go on to win the game but this match is fondly remembered by many for the continued torture of Gattuso. The second nutmeg happened later in the second half as O’Neill swept forward from the halfway line and the third, from a deeper position in the second half. An almost balletic exchange of fouls (from Gattuso) and trickery from (O’Neill) punctuated the rest of the game.

In 2017, O’Neill recalled an exchange from the pitch with summed up the encounter beautifully:-

Gattuso: You should stop mocking me. You should stop now or I will kill you.

O’Neill: Listen, man, you are getting embarrassed in front of all these fans, so perhaps it would be wiser if you stop marking me, don’t you think?

O’Neill seemed all of his 186 centimetres in this game. Fans of Serie A will always remember El Mago as a tall man – his height seemed augmented by his rolled down socks and untucked shirt. 

Cagliari 4 Roma 3

One of the most entertaining encounters of the 1990’s had one of its greatest entertainers as the protagonist. O’Neill, rather than Totti went away with the headline.

This was another encounter from arguably O’Neill’s greatest season (1998/99) and he started the game in a more advanced role as the shadow striker in a 4-4-1-1. Roma came into the game 6th in the league with Cagliari sitting comfortably in mid-table after fifteen games (Alberto Malesani’s Parma were top at this stage). 

To say this game was open would be a grotesque understatement: neither side seemed to care about defending or trying to control the game in midfield – a chaos that O’Neill revelled in. His strike partner Roberto Muzzi opened the scoring in Sardinia after just three minutes, sending a noisy Stadio Sant’Elia into raptures. The vociferous crowd were quick to get on Roma’s back but the giallorossi equalised through Marco Delvecchio who put his hands to ears in response. He soon scored a second but a breathless twenty minute spell finished with O’Neill as the star. He snatched upon a disastrous backpass from Damiano Tommasi, rounded Antonio Chimenti and equalised from an acute angle on the left-hand side. His celebration? A hand to the ear. O’Neill seemed to have spent much of 98/99 trolling Italian players of note.

The second half picked up where the first left off with more goalmouth antics from Delvecchio and O’Neill: both had good chances saved before Roberto Muzzi put Cagliari ahead. O’Neill could have made it four but his long range chance, after beating several players on the left hand side, hit the bar. Cagliari’s failure to put the game to bed came back to haunt them when Carmine Gautieri equalised. The crowd in Cagliari were not content with an entertaining draw and their passion clearly infected O’Neill who remained at the centre of the match until the very end. 

With 90 minutes gone, the Uruguayan released Gaetano Vasari on the right hand side before bursting into the box. Vasari sent in a looping cross and the unmarked O’Neill headed home. 4 – 3 and the cheers from the Sant’Elia could be heard across the island. In his third year at the club, an icon became a legend and the following season O’Neill would be given the captain’s armband.

Fiorentina 1 Juventus 3

O’Neill’s flashes of brilliance at Cagliari weren’t enough to keep them up in 99/00 but did earn him a 10 million Euro transfer to Juventus in 2000. Marcello Lippi wanted a backup to Zidane and the talented Uruguayan seemingly fit the bill. The move would not come off, O’Neill would only play 14 times for the club over a two year spell but his training ground work with Zidane, Davids and Del Piero left impressions that remain to this day.

The Fiorentina game, in his second and final season, was a rare moment for O’Neill to play with his biggest fan, Zidane and, in order to accommodate, new Juve boss Carlo Ancelotti moved El Mago to a deeper midfield role. The game really belonged to Zidane, who dominated the game in midfield but also in his ability to drift into flanks and be found by his teammates. O’Neill occupied a supporting role but retained the untucked shirt and low lying socks. It must have been a strange sight for fans, used to seeing him donning the number 10 and playing with total freedom at Cagliari, to watch O’Neill occupy a more tactically disciplined role with a six on his back. 

He was not involved in the first two Juve goals and, tellingly, the celebrations afterwards but symbolically, after Zidane’s exit on 87 minutes he left an imprint on the game. He took a perfectly executed in-swinging free kick, headed home by David Trezeguet just before full time. Teammates rush to mob the Frenchman, whilst O’Neill is further away both physically and, perhaps mentally – as he said after his spell in Turin, “I was nobody in that Juventus side”.

A few days after his death in December 2022, O’Neill’s ashes were scattered on the pitch of the 1,000 capacity Estadio Omar Odriozola in his home town of Paso de los Toros, Uruguay. It’s a small stadium but was full of his family and people wearing Juventus, Cagliari and Nacional shirts in his honour. Perhaps this final resting place is a perfect symbol of O’Neill the footballer, best situated surrounded by the people who loved him.

Looking back at these three matches, coupled with the ceremony in the stadium in Paso de los Toros I’m reminded that the most memorable characters in drama often don’t occupy the stage for a whole play, and O’Neill lived and died this philosophy on and off the pitch. As Benvolio says of the passing of Mercutio midway through Romeo and Juliet:-

‘That gallant spirit hath aspired the clouds,

Which too untimely here did scorn the earth.’

William Shakespeare

Fabián O’Neill 1973-2022.