During the late 80s, MICHEL was rated amongst the world`s greatest footballers. Like the other members of the "Quinta del Buitre", he had come up through Real Madrid`s youth ranks. When the Serie A established itself as the world`s strongest and most glamorous football league during the mid- to late 1980s, an average of two in three world class players, at some point in their careers, went on to play for Italian club sides. Having won two UEFA-Cups in the 80s, Madrid had not yet regained the position in international club football that it had held in the glory days of Puskas and Di Stefano, but the club was wealthy enough to discourage their most prized assets from joining the services of foreign clubs. Even now, 25 years after the "Bosman ruling", a piece of labour law that revolutionized European club football, Italian and Spanish players who have played in the other country`s top division remain few and far between while foreign players, mostly from South America, have often played for clubs in both the Primera División and the Serie A. As for Real Madrid, the only player from this set of the most illustrious among the club`s homegrown players, the "Quinta Del Buitre", who would spend two seasons at a Serie A club, was Rafael Martin Vasquez (AC Torino 1990-92). At that time, the glory days of the "Quinta", including Butragueno `s and Michel `s, were long over. The former had risen to world stardom at the World Cup in Mexico 1986 when he had scored 4 of 5 goals in the Spaniards` 5-1 rout of the Danes. Two years later, the Spanish team travelled to the EURO in West Germany as title contenders, but failed to make it past Italy and West Germany in the group stage. Nevertheless, Michel was one of the most sought-after players, so much indeed, that Real Madrid deemed it necessary to publicly announce that their midfielder, Miguel Gonzalez aka MICHEL, was definitely not up for sale. The club had won five consecutive Spanish championships between 1985 and 1990 plus two UEFA Cups in 1985 and `86. Michel and the other four of "the vulture`s five" would stay with Real Madrid, but they were definitely past their prime. In 1988, Dutch legend Johan Cruyff took over managerial duties at Barça which would go into history as the unremarkable beginning of no less than a football revolution the consequences of which have become ever more palpable with every year that has elapsed since then: For one thing, Cruyff managed to sign two foreign players that no other great club seemed to have had on the radar. In 1989, he brought in the Danish midfielder Michael Laudrup, one of the most technically gifted footballers to grace the game. As a young prodigy, Laudrup had been signed by Italian giants Juventus Turin. but had spent the first years of his Italian career loaned out to Lazio. When he was finally brought back to Juve, Laudrup stepped up as an understudy to superstar Platini