On September 22 1976 a great footballer was born in Rio. “Do you know who Ronaldo was named after?” his father asked the writer Frans Oosterwijk years later. “After the doctor who closed off his mother’s tubes after his birth. Ha, ha. Doctor Ronaldo, his name was.”

That birth kicked off the most fertile week in football history. Four days after Ronaldo, little Michael Ballack was born in Görlitz in the German Democratic Republic, Francesco Totti followed in Rome on September 27, and the quartet was completed when Andriy Shevchenko came to earth in the Ukrainian village of Dvirkivschyna on September 29.