Saviola's career has been going down for the past 3 years. He came as the hottest prospect from River to Europe giants Barcelona in 2002,having just been nominated the youngest top scorer in the history of the Argentinian league. If any of you still has CM3 installed, especially the CM0102 version, just take a look at his magnificent stats. There is hardly a striker related area where he doesn't score a 20 and is definitely the best striker i have ever seen in CM/FM.

His career has been going down from his first moment in Europe. Started well, with almost 20 goals per year for 2 seasons with Barca,  but Barca was facing its bad years, with no title gained. Then Raijkard came and he didn't trust young Javier, so he has been spending past 2 years on loan at Monaco and Sevilla.

Javier is definitely a quality striker, but he has never been able to adjust to the european style of game or fullfill his potential. His stats in FM have declined, but still remain far too high for the player's calibre in my personal opinion.

In today's match Saviola, however, was for  70 minutes the top class player we had got used to. His main characteristics are his acceleration and off the ball capacities -an almost magical guessing of the playmaker's next move on the pitch- both perfectly described by his FM stats in the areas. They were the ones that helped him score the 38th minute goal. Speeding behind the defensive line at the perfect moment for Riquelme's magic pass.

FM also notes his advanced dribbling and technique, as demonstrated by his 70th minute  move, when he dribbled 3 opponents to make a final pass which Crespo fumbled

 {mos_smf_discuss:FM 2006 Players}