Even by the wild standards of Brazilian strikers, Edmundo was a Grade A nutter.
Nicknamed The Animal, his partying made Ronaldinho look like James Milner.
From getting circus animals pissed to swinging punches in cup finals, meet The Animal...
Edmundo played football like he lived life: hard, fast and with little care for those around him.
In his breakthrough season in Brazil, he scored 29 goals in 28 games, and was sent off seven times.
A teammate later rated him "10 as a player and 0 as a person".
Despite his volatility, Brazil called him up for the '97 Copa América.
Edmundo played superbly as Brazil won the title, but he also punched an opponent in the face during the Final.
That didn’t put off Fiorentina, who stumped up a hefty fee to take him to Italy in 1998.
Within months of joining, he threw a strop at a lack of playing time and disappeared back to Brazil.
When he was persuaded to return, he scored in his first game back.
Afterwards he told reporters, "I’m dedicating my goal to myself. After all I’ve been through, I deserve it."
In his second season, Edmundo was on fire as Fiorentina led Serie A and chased a historic league title.
So it was pretty inconvenient when, midway through the season, The Animal went AWOL.
But the investigation didn’t last long...
It was the week of Rio Carnival, and Fiorentina weren’t pleased to discover their striker samba dancing along the Copacabana with a bottle of cachaça.
He was even spotted on the piss with Maradona.
They sacked him, and he flounced back to Brazil, where more scandals followed.
After hiring a full circus for his son’s birthday, Edmundo got bored of musical chairs.
He zeroed in on a chimp in an Adidas tracksuit called Pedrinho, and got the primate off its tits on whiskey and lager.
He later appeared on the cover of FHM sharing a pint with the monkey.
But things turned extremely dark when he was convicted for crashing his Jeep, killing three people.
After a judge initially jailed him for 4 years, Edmundo got it reduced to a suspended sentence.
Back at Vasco, he linked up with his old friend and legendary striker Romário.
The pair had once been best mates, even releasing an ill-judged rap tune together.
But everything went pear-shaped when Edmundo was picked for the World Cup ahead of Romário…
Their feud was beautifully petty. Romário displayed unsavoury caricatures of Edmundo in his bar.
The Animal told his teammate he was ugly, had no game with the ladies and was only picked because he was mates with the club president.
On the pitch, the pair were far more harmonious, excelling as Vasco battered Man Utd in the Club World Cup.
The Animal scored a wondergoal, flicking it past Mikel Silvestre and chipping it into the net.
But the bad blood with Romario soon started to boil…
In a league match shortly after, Vasco won a penalty and Romário wrestled the ball away from regular taker Edmundo.
He skied it, and The Animal told a reporter in the middle of the game, "I was training to take them. But it’s the king’s little prince who decides."
Romario replied: “My dream is to never play with him again.”
Edmundo was done.
He left Vasco to embark on a nomadic swansong to his career that comprised ten clubs in eight years.
And he still reckons that at his peak he was better than Ronaldo.
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