great strike partnerships

Dwight Yorke is congratulated by Andy Cole after scoring in the 5-1 destruction of Wimbledon at Old Trafford on 17 October 1998. Cole scored twice in the same game. Photograph: Ross Kinnaird/Allsport

1) Kenny Dalglish and Ian Rush (Liverpool)

Liverpool have more to thank Steve McMahon for than the couple of stellar seasons he drove their midfield in the late 1980s; he's arguably the man who brought English football's arguably greatest striking partnership together. Kenny Dalglish hadn't scored a league goal at Anfield during the first 10 months of 1981. He had turned 30 in March, and had suggested to Bob Paisley that it was time he moved back into midfield, or at least a withdrawn role. Paisley wasn't interested, though, keeping his star striker up front, sure he would find form again. But he didn't, and was sorely out of sorts when Everton crossed Stanley Park for a First Division fixture at the beginning of November.

Just before half-time, McMahon – at this point an Evertonian – crocked Ray Kennedy, who had to be replaced by David Johnson. Moving back into midfield to accommodate the substitute striker, Dalglish started to pull strings, scoring twice in a 3-1 win. Ian Rush, a recent signing from Chester and being slowly blooded into the team, scored the other. Something snapped into place in Paisley's head. From now on, Dalglish would play just off the young Rush, running rampage in the extra space afforded to him in the hole. Having only scored eight league goals in 1980-81, the Scot hit 13 the year after, and a ludicrous 18 as a 32-year-old in 1982-83.

But his manipulation of the mobile Rush would be even more outstanding: the Welsh striker scored 30 goals in all competitions during his first season, 31 the year after, and a frankly silly 47 in 1983-84 (when the pair scored 59 between them). Rush had put years on the older man's career, who in turn had made him. Rush's record post-Dalglish was admirable – two 26-goal season hauls when Liverpool were still a force, an arguably more impressive 22-goal total in 1992-93 when the team was properly on the slide – but he never carried quite the same threat.

2) Emilio Butragueño and Hugo Sánchez (Real Madrid)

The classic example of a partnership that is, even though, er, it isn't. Not really. Emilio Butragueño was a quiet, polite man, and a slight, creative, scuttling forward. Hugo Sánchez was vainglorious and self-centred, a wallop the ball first, ask questions later kind of striker. They didn't like each other at all. They didn't really feed off each other either. And yet it somehow worked.

Real Madrid ran up five titles in a row during the late 1980s, and they were a team set up simply to get the ball into the box for either Butragueño to sniff out a chance, or Sánchez to PlayStation one in. It didn't matter who got there first; either way it worked. In 1989-90, the team scored a ridiculous 107 league goals, Sánchez helping himself to 38 of them – in only 35 matches – while Butragueño added another 10. Dalglish and Rush they weren't. But then Dalglish and Rush didn't score goals like this. Or this.

3) Mick Harford and Brian Stein (Luton Town)

One of the classic big-man-little-man partnerships; certainly, thanks to the presence of 6ft 4in battering ram Mick Harford, one of the hardest. Harford and the diminutive Stein – quick on the turn like Jimmy Greaves, with the low centre of gravity of Denis Law – helped Luton to their best-ever league position (seventh in 1983-84) then played integral parts in the club's greatest-ever triumph.

Harford was off the pitch injured in that 1988 Littlewoods Cup final against Arsenal when Stein scored the last-minute winner, but Stein's opener on 13 minutes offers perhaps the best illustration of their genius. The little man finishes the move exquisitely, passing the ball past John Lukic and into the bottom-right corner of the net – but the chance only came about because Harford had pulled three Arsenal defenders out of position while going up for a header.

Harford eventually left for Derby, the plastic pitch at Kenilworth Road irritating the hell out of his ankles. But he couldn't stop helping the club: on the final day of the 1990-91 season, he crashed a header past his own keeper – Peter Shilton, no less – from the outside of the box. The own goal secured Luton's First Division future for another year.

4) Andy Cole and Dwight Yorke

Chance can be the finest thing. Many successful World Cup partnerships have come together almost by accident, such as Gary Lineker and Peter Beardsley, and Toto Schillaci and Roberto Baggio. It can happen at club level, too. Andy Cole was arguably Sir Alex Ferguson's fourth choice to partner Dwight Yorke, after Patrick Kluivert (who was only interested in joining Arsenal), Ole Solskjaer and Teddy Sheringham. But after a month of gathering splinters, Cole was rotated into the side for a mundane league fixture at Southampton in October 1998, and he and Yorke had the sort of instant chemistry usually reserved for slushy romcoms. United scored 14 goals in the next three games, a smile came on Cole's face for the first time in years, and he and Yorke would spend the season mischievously and irrepressibly running amok in England and Europe, most memorably in the Camp Nou, the Delle Alpi and the bedroom of the 36 games they started that season, United lost just one (at Sheffield Wednesday) and scored 81 goals. Overall they scored 53 goals between them, propelling United to the treble. That wonderful move against Barcelona stands out, but others against Brondby, Sheffield Wednesday and West Ham in particular showed an almost eerie telepathy. All of which makes it peculiar that their success was so short-lived. They shared 46 goals the following season but were never the same, especially in Europe, and Ferguson turned his attention to another Dutch forward born on 1 July 1976: not Kluivert, but Ruud van Nistelrooy.

5) Giuseppe Signori, Francesco Baiano and Roberto Rambaudi (Foggia)

Before the twin facilitators of the backpass law and three points for a win, Serie A was a grizzled, gnarled world in which attackers were seen and not heard (except when they were being kicked) and goals had an almost Halley's Comet quality. Newly promoted Foggia, under the hippie management of the majestic Zdenek Zeman, came into that environment in 1991 and decided, Sod this for a game of catennacio. An adventurous 4-3-3 formation was centred around Roberto Rambaudi and the little-and-little pair of Giuseppe Signori and Francesco Baiano, born seven days apart in February 1968, whose rapier movements gave cynical defences a serious and unusual problem. All three would go on to play for Italy, but at this stage Baiano was comfortably outscoring the future star Signori.

Foggia finished ninth in that 1991-92 season but scored a truly unprecedented 58 goals in 34 goals. In the previous 25 seasons of Serie A, only three sides had scored more, and all finished in the top three. It was as incongruous as seeing a jester in a film noir, or a poem in a porno. Their intrepid approach led to some pastings – most notably an 8-2 shellacking at home to Milan – but they didn't care and turned up the next week with the same smile on their face. They became known as Foggia dei Miracoli. This was infectious, feelgood stuff; as joyously unexpected as digging up a brand new colour in the back garden. But it wasn't just neutrals who loved Foggia. Their rivals did, too, and Lazio, Fiorentina and Atalanta hoovered up Signori, Baiano and Rambaudi respectively in the summer. The adventure was short-lived, but it really was fun while it lasted.

6) Alfredo di Stefano and Ferenc Puskas (Real Madrid)

Nandor Hidegkuti would probably have had something to say about it, what with changing All Football just behind Ferenc Puskas in Hungary's Aranycsapat (Golden Team) of the early 1950s, but have two better strikers than Puskas and Alfredo di Stefano ever played alongside each other?

There are seven reasons, all of them in that European Cup final, to say NO.

And to think they were both in their 30s before they got together! The mind boggles at what they could have achieved as younger men. As if this wasn't enough.