Zinedine Zidane shared dressing rooms with Ronaldo Nazário, Alessandro Del Piero, Edgar Davids, David Beckham and Thierry Henry. He won a World Cup, a European Championship, a Champions League and a Ballon d’Or. When the conversation turns to the best players he ever lined up with, those names usually arrive first.
Yet on more than one occasion, Zidane has given a different answer. According to The Blizzard, the Frenchman has said: “O’Neill was the most talented player I ever played with.”
The player was Fabián O’Neill, a Uruguayan attacking midfielder who spent one awkward season as Zidane’s understudy at Juventus, never became a household name, retired at 29 and died at 49. The compliment is startling precisely because the career that followed it was so small.
The Wizard from Paso de los Toros
Fabián Alberto O’Neill Domínguez was born on 14 October 1973 in Paso de los Toros, a small town in central Uruguay. He was the great-great-grandson of an Irish immigrant from County Cork. Supporters later called him El Mago — The Wizard — because the ball seemed to stay glued to his feet.
He broke through at Nacional as a teenager and won the Uruguayan title in his first senior season in 1992. By 1993 he was already in the Uruguay squad at the Copa América. He would finish with 19 caps and two goals. People in Montevideo spoke of him as a possible successor to Enzo Francescoli. The technique was there. The problem, even then, was everything around it.
In 1996 he moved to Italy with Cagliari. That is where the legend of O’Neill really formed. Over four seasons he played 120 Serie A games and scored 12 league goals. Cagliari went down and came back up. He stayed a favourite. He could pass, shoot with either foot, and humiliate defenders for sport. In a 1999 match against Salernitana he nutmegged a young Gennaro Gattuso three times in the same game.
Gian Piero Ventura, who coached him at Cagliari and later managed Italy, was even more emphatic than Zidane. In 2017 he said: “I have seen Zinedine Zidane and Juan Verón play, but they weren’t like Fabián O’Neill. O’Neill was unique. I coached him at Cagliari. He had strength, technique and quality.”
Backup to Zidane
After Cagliari were relegated again in 2000, Juventus paid a large fee — reports put it around €10 million, or 20 billion lire — to bring O’Neill to Turin. He was 26. The idea was simple: he would cover for Zidane, and if the Frenchman left, he might inherit the role.
He arrived in a squad coached by Carlo Ancelotti and packed with stars: Del Piero, Davids, David Trezeguet, Filippo Inzaghi, Antonio Conte, Edwin van der Sar. Zidane was still there for that first season. O’Neill barely played. Wikipedia lists 14 Serie A appearances and no league goals. Across all competitions he made around 20 appearances. He was liked in the dressing room. On the pitch he never forced his way in.
Zidane left for Real Madrid in 2001. O’Neill still did not become a regular. In January 2002 Juventus sold him to mid-table Perugia as part of a deal involving Davide Baiocco. He scored once in nine Serie A games, then drifted back to Cagliari without playing a Serie B match, and finally home to Nacional for five more appearances.
He was named in Uruguay’s 2002 World Cup squad but injured himself before the opening game against Denmark and never appeared at the tournament. At 29, he retired.
He Did Not Want the Life
O’Neill never pretended he had been robbed by bad luck alone. In later interviews he said he hated hard training and did not care about being the best. At Juventus he watched Zidane, Del Piero, Davids and Nedvěd work every day as if their lives depended on it. He did not.
“I never trained that hard in my life because I didn’t care about being the best,” he recalled. He called himself “a kind of joker” in the dressing room and suggested Zidane’s praise came partly from friendship. “I’m proud to have been Zidane’s teammate at Juventus and obviously for what he has said several times about me,” he told The Blizzard. “But I’m pretty sure that I wasn’t the best player he played with… what he has said about me is also an overstatement, definitely exaggerated.”
Alcohol was the other thread. O’Neill said he had been drinking since childhood. Juventus medical staff warned him about cholesterol and told him he could die if he did not change. He did not stop. Teammates asked him on the team bus whether he had been drinking. His answer, he later claimed, was always yes — wine, not milk. He insisted injuries, not drinking, ended his Juventus spell. He also admitted he drank every day because that was who he was.
After retirement he said he had earned a fortune and lost it on horses, gambling and the life that came with both. He published an autobiography, Hasta la última gota — Until the Last Drop. He said he had no regrets about walking away at 29. He had already played for Juventus and Uruguay. After that, he joked, there was only heaven.
Two Different Kinds of Praise
The O’Neill quote sits awkwardly next to other things Zidane has said. In separate interviews the Frenchman has named Ronaldo as the best teammate he ever had, a player with “no weaknesses” who did whatever he wanted with the ball. Those comments were about completeness: speed, finishing, big-game impact, the whole package.
The O’Neill remarks were about something narrower and stranger: raw talent that stopped Zidane in training. One version of greatness is the player who wins everything. Another is the teammate who makes even a Ballon d’Or winner look twice. Zidane appears to have meant the second.
That is why the story keeps returning. Football is full of “what if” careers. Most of them are padded with excuses. O’Neill offered almost none. He had the gift. He did not want the discipline that turns a gift into a career. Ventura and Zidane saw the first part. The record books show the second.
A Short Life After a Short Career
O’Neill died in Montevideo on 25 December 2022 after being admitted with bleeding linked to chronic liver disease. He was 49. Nacional called him the Wizard one last time. His ashes were scattered in Paso de los Toros.
His senior league record is modest: 211 appearances, 28 goals. He never became Francescoli’s heir, never became Zidane’s successor, never became a World Cup starter. He was a Cagliari idol, a Juventus footnote, and a cautionary tale that still sounds unreal because of who praised him.
Zidane has now taken charge of France. The players around him are global stars. Somewhere in his memory is a Uruguayan midfielder who lasted one season in his shadow and still, in Zidane’s own words, had more talent than anyone else he played with.
That sentence remains the most interesting thing about Fabián O’Neill. Not because it made him famous. Because it did not.
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