At Milan there is Mohammed Aliyu, a Nigerian forward, also 16, who caused a stir when he came on as a sub in a Serie A match last January. I don't think we have any problems there." Young players like Roque Santa Cruz are the raw currency of football. The other young star of the Copa America, the 16-year-old Jhonnier Montaño of Colombia, scored an astonishing goal as the team pasted Argentina 3-0. Now he is on Parma's bench, waiting for the chance that will surely come soon. He started to learn German at a good institute in Paraguay, and now he's here he spends two hours a day on it Already he speaks good German He's looking and learning each day. Ronaldo, the former boy wonder, "dead in the body and dead in the head" - just like those other former prodigies, Diego Armando Maradona and Paul Gascoigne, boys whose precocious skills amazed and astonished their public, who played without a cloud on their horizon until the sky came crashing down. It helps, Hörwick said, that Santa Cruz is an intelligent boy "He's had a good education His father is the chief of police in Asuncion.

"The danger is that he becomes a superstar before he's even stepped off the plane So we have been hiding him away No interviews, no television. We wanted to give him time to grow up in Munich, and to understand the new situation He's just arrived from Paraguay, you know. We don't want to have a second Ronaldo, who is 23 years old and is already dead in the body and dead in the head because nobody saved him." Words like that freeze a football fan's blood. "It's just like in England," Bayern's spokesman, Markus Hörwick, told me this week. During that time they watched the boy in several matches, talked to him, met his family, and worked out a £3m deal.

So this summer, when Roque Santa Cruz, still only 17, emerged as one of the stars of the Copa America, scoring against Japan and Peru, he was already a Bayern Munich player. A couple of months after the end of the tournament, and just a week after his 18th birthday, he was making his Bundesliga debut. Last weekend he scored in the 3-0 away win over Hansa Rostock which lifted Bayern clear at the top of the table, just in time for the start of the club's centenary celebrations. His new employers are monitoring his progress with great care. Their interest had been aroused by a South American scout's description of a prodigy who was scoring goals for his club and had already won his first senior international cap. Beckenbauer and Hoeness, the president and the general manager of Bayern Munich, spent a fortnight in Asuncion. Hernan Crespo, their underrated Argentinian striker, is the leading goalscorer in Serie A . FIXTURES (league positions in brackets) : This afternoon: Verona (14) v Venezia (17) Tonight: Bari (7) v Internazionale (5).