When Radamel Falcao was a child, he would watch his father toiling for a series of sides of ever-decreasing quality and it upset him. “I watched my dad play in defence and it disappointed me,” he said. “I wanted him to go up and score a goal.” Radamel García once scored a famous goal against Millonarios in Bogotá, but he was more generally known for two things: his aggression and his religious devotion. “For every foul, another prayer,” as the joke had it at the time. But his son didn’t share the joke. His son wondered why anybody would ever settle for playing at the back.

His father, perhaps, shared a sense that football held something more than clattering opposing strikers, and hoped his son would achieve it. Although he called his son Radamel, he also gave him the middle name Falcao after the great Brazil, Internacional and Roma midfielder. Quickly, though, it became apparent that Radamel Falcao García Zárate was not much like either of the players he was named after: he was a centre-forward and a very good one.

His talent emerged rapidly. Falcao was only 13 years and 199 days old when he made his debut for Lanceros Boyacá against Deportivo Pereira in the Colombian second flight in August 1999. At 14, he played seven times for the club but even then, Falcao knew his future lay away from Colombia; a fact of the economics of Colombia and of football in general.

In 2002, a statue was erected at the stadium in Falcao’s home town of Santa Marta: 22 feet high, cast in bronze and featuring an extraordinary explosion of curly hair, it depicted Carlos Valderrama, who had played 94 games for the local side Unión Magdalena and a further 164 for Millonarios and Deportivo Cali before making the move to Europe with Montpellier. The world had changed, though, and the year before the statue went up, Falcao, at the age of 15, had left Santa Marta to move to Argentina and join River Plate for $500,000. His mother, Constanza, had urged him not to go, but Falcao already understood that a footballer’s life is a nomadic one.

His father had been a regular at the Bogotá side Independiente Santa Fe, but as age sapped his ability he moved to Unión, which is why Falcao was born on the Caribbean coast. When he was four, the family moved again, this time to Venezuela, where the national sport is not football but baseball. After taking a bang to the nose playing football, Falcao switched his attention to baseball and apparently showed great promise, his pace from a standing start a great asset when running between bases.

But in 1995, his father’s career over, the Garcías returned to Bogotá and Falcao turned his attention back to football. He trained after school with a local side, where his finishing caught the attention of Silvano Espindola, an Argentinian friend of his father. A former Unión player and devout Christian, he ran a football school that also had a religious aspect, looking to produce not just good players but good men. Whether they succeeded or not with Falcao is almost impossible to judge, but Tor-Kristian Karlsson, the former chief executive of Monaco, describes Falcao as the humblest player he has ever met.

Santa Fe and Millonarios both wanted to sign Falcao but he preferred to join Espindola’s side, Lanceros. It was Espindola who took the decision with the team’s coach, Hernán Pacheco, to give Falcao his debut at such an early age. “He was a bit shy and the other players really didn’t like what I did. Imagine having to come off for a 13-year-old kid? Both my guys and the opposition told me to stop messing around and treat football in a professional way,” Pacheco said, but his team soon recognised Falcao’s ability. “They were all impressed after that game. We knew he was something special.”

It wasn’t just his ability. There was also a tenacity to Falcao that made him keep going in Buenos Aires when many other Colombians, lonely and alienated in a foreign city, returned home. It earned him his nickname, El Tigre, after a team-mate told him he had played like a tiger in an under-15 game (if you want to see him looking terrified, watch the video of him reluctantly going along with a sponsor’s stunt in his Atlético Madrid days, meeting two real tigers on the pitch at the Vicente Calderón).

Typically, though, Falcao’s life wasn’t just about football. He also enrolled at the university in the district of Palermo to study journalism. It meant not only that he had a fall-back if the football did not work out for him, but also that he developed a circle of friends outside the game. He was not just caught up in the bubble as so many of his team-mates were, he had that most elusive of attributes: perspective. “He genuinely seems to feel grateful he’s doing what he’s doing,” Karlsson says.

His father’s example had shown him that a footballer could not be sure of staying in the same place for any length of time but Falcao soon learned for himself that the career can be precarious. He was selected for Colombia Under-17s to play at the World Cup in Finland in 2003, but ruptured ankle ligaments shortly before the tournament.

His faith, he said, helped him through the rehabilitation process. Christianity is central to him. “I believe in Jesus Christ and try to follow the style of life he led on earth,” Falcao has said. It was at a church that he met his wife, the Argentinian singer Lorelei Taron. They married in 2007 and have one daughter.

Falcao made his debut for River in the 2004-05 Clausura (which closes the season) and, by the 2005-06 Apertura (which opens it), he was a regular. He scored seven goals in seven games but then injury struck and he had surgery on a cruciate for the first time. Recovery took a long time and he seemed ponderous on his return, but Daniel Passarella, who by then had taken over as coach, retained his faith. “He’s like Van Basten,” he said. “He scores goals, he attacks on all sides and he heads like a god.”

And for all his perspective, Falcao is also utterly dedicated. His career has passed without a whiff of scandal. His main pastime seems to be watching baseball on TV. As the Argentinian journalist Juan Pablo Varsky wrote, if the paparazzi relied on him, they would starve.

Passarella was proved right. By 2009, Falcao had scored 34 goals in 90 games for River, who had reportedly turned down a bid of £9m for him from Milan. By the following year, though, hard up and having been eliminated from the Copa Libertadores in the group stage, River were forced to listen to offers and sold him to Porto for £3.5m. A week earlier, Falcao had almost joined Benfica, only for them to refuse to pay an additional £600,000 to complete the deal.

Benfica were soon made to regret their caution as Falcao scored in each of his first four games for Porto. He went on to finish as the second highest scorer in the league and to win the cup. The following season was Porto’s golden year under André Villas-Boas, when they went unbeaten through the league campaign, won the cup and also lifted the Europa League, the pairing of Falcao and Hulk, with either Cristian Rodríguez or Silvestre Varela to the left, proving irresistible. Falcao was quick, superb in the air – remarkably so given he is only 5ft 10in – blessed with a powerful and accurate shot, and capable of pulling wide and dropping deep. As such he fits into the mould of complete strikers: like Marco van Basten or, in more recent times, Andriy Shevchenko.

The goals kept coming: 16 in 22 league starts the following season, then 52 in 67 at Atlético, where he won another Europa League, then 11 in 17 for Monaco before last week’s move to Manchester United. The only doubt is the injuries. The surgery he had after suffering anterior cruciate damage in January was the third he has had on his left knee. The fear is twofold: that his spring and explosive pace may have been diminished and, more seriously, that the knee has an irreparable weakness.

Lurking behind the Van Basten comparisons is the thought that injury ended the Dutchman’s career at 29. Falcao turns 29 in February.

THE JOURNEY

1999-2005 Lanceros Boyacá P8, 1 goal

Makes his professional debut aged just 13 in Colombia’s second tier in 1999 and a year later plays another seven games.

2005–09 River Plate P90, 34 goals

Makes an early impression with seven goals in as many games but stalls when he twice injures the ligaments in his right knee. Regains his momentum under Diego Simeone in 2008 and a year later scores 16 goals in 35 games.

2009-11 Porto P51, 41 goals

Blossoms in Portugal, hitting 34 goals in his debut season. The following campaign sets a Europa League record with 17 goals in 14 games, bagging the winner in the final against Braga.

2011–13 Atlético Madrid P68, 52 goals

Arrives for a club record €40m and in his first season nets 36 goals, again scoring in the Europa League final, this time twice against Athletic Bilbao. Starts the next season under Simeone with a hat-trick against Chelsea in the 4-1 Super Cup victory and plays a crucial role in the 2013 Copa del Rey defeat of Real Madrid.

2013-14 Monaco P20, 11 goals

A €60m move and scores on his debut, and he maintains a healthy games-to-goals ratio before a knee injury in January ends his season and rules the Colombian out of the World Cup.

2014 Manchester United P0

Moves on loan to United for £6m with an option to sign permanently for £43.5m. Is expected to make his debut against QPR a week on Sunday.