Based on our recent articles about the wild excesses of the Argentinian defender, Ramón Aguirre Suárez, you might assume the title of this post refers to the approximate number of body parts that BTLM’s favourite anti-hero broke opponents into. As fun as that sounds, this post is actually to do with a first BTLM collaboration with one of our favourite blogs at 8bit Football

8bit Football is a very simple concept done very well. Footballers and scenes from football history are re-imagined graphically in a minimalist, pixellated retro style – think FIFA83 rather than FIFA13. Creating such artwork brings some quite distinct challenges for the artist. Working within such self-imposed technical limitations, real thought has to go in to deciding which player features and actions should have the few available pixels thrown at them to make the subject as instantly recognisable as possible. Matheus at 8bit performs this balancing act very well indeed.

We asked him if he would like to create a piece for BTLM and we suggested the larger than life figure of Ramón Aguirre Suárez would make the ideal subject matter. Matheus came back to us with the image below and we think it perfectly captures the raw essence of the world’s wildest footballer.

The victim in the illustration is the Milan striker, Nestor Combin, who was savagely assaulted by Aguirre Suárez in the 1969 World Club Cup Second Leg  (Read about it here). Below is a picture of Combin’s mangled face a couple of days later upon his return to Italy.