Christian Vieri

Early career

Vieri started his playing career at Marconi Stallions. Upon his return to Italy in 1988, his first club was Santa Lucia, a team from Prato, where his first coach was Luciano Diamanti, the father of the player Alessandro Diamanti. The next year he became affiliated with Prato and scored several goals in the Campionato Nazionale Dante Berretti. The following year, he moved to Torino after being spotted by Serino Rampanti, who recommended him to the coach Sergio Vatta. The president of Prato, Andrea Toccafondi, did not want to sell the promising striker. To convince him to sell Vieri to Torino, the Granata also had to buy the son of Toccafondi, Paolo, who was a goalkeeper. After a year in the Torino youth ranks, Vieri was given his first team debut at age 18, on 30 October 1991 in the 1991–92 Coppa Italia under Emiliano Mondonico; he scored the second goal in a 2–0 win for Torino against Lazio. On 15 December of the same year, he made his official debut in Serie A during the final minutes of a home game against Fiorentina (2–0). He would later score his first goal in the league in a match won 4–0 against Genoa. At the end of the 1991–92 season, Vieri would pick up a runners up medal as an unused substitute in the 1992 UEFA Cup final, lost on away goals to Ajax. In November 1992, Vieri was sold to Serie B club Pisa, scoring two goals in 18 appearances. He would only stay in Pisa for one season, moving to fellow Serie B side Ravenna for the 1993–94 season,…

Vieri scored 23 goals in 49 matches for Italy between 1997 and 2005. He played for his country at the 1998 World Cup, scoring five times, and the 2002 World Cup, scoring four times. He endured a less successful tournament at Euro 2004, whilst he missed Euro 2000 and 2006 World Cup through injury. Vieri is generally considered to be Italy's greatest pure striker of recent times, despite strong competition, and is one of Italy's most prolific World Cup goal scorers. Appearing in a total of nine World Cup games in 1998 and 2002, he found the net nine times, making him one of the most feared strikers in those tournaments along with Ronaldo and Miroslav Klose, and Italy's joint-highest World Cup goalscorer, alongside Roberto Baggio and Paolo Rossi. He was named by Pelé as one of the 125 greatest living footballers in March 2004. Alongside Francesco Graziani, he is Italy's ninth-highest goalscorer of all time. Vieri received his first international cap during the 1996–97 season after some impressive displays for Juventus; he made his Italy senior debut on 29 March 1997, at the age of 23, in a 3–0 win over Moldova, in which he also scored his first international goal, which was also the 1000th goal scored by the Italy national team. He scored a key goal for Italy in a 1–1 draw in the away leg of the team's play off against Russia during their qualification campaign for the 1998 World Cup. At the finals of the tournament in France he formed a strong partnership with Roberto Baggio.…

Vieri was a complete, prolific and opportunistic striker, with a keen eye for goal. Due to his notable goal-scoring prowess, Vieri is regarded by pundits as one of the greatest Italian strikers of all time and one of the top strikers of his generation. Although he was considered to be more of a physical rather than talented player in his youth, who lacked strong technical ability, he was able to refine his touch on the ball in training as his career progressed, showing significant improvements to his technique. In his prime, his unique and direct offensive style of play, which blended power with pace and solid technical skills, led him to be compared to Luigi Riva and Roberto Boninsegna, as well as earning him the nickname of "Il Toro" ("The Bull"). Despite his goalscoring ability, he was also injury-prone throughout his career, however, which greatly affected his pace, fitness and mobility in later years. Vieri was predominantly left-footed, although he was capable of scoring with both feet, as well as with his head, and from volleys. He has often been described as a large, old fashioned centre forward, due to his powerful physical presence and outstanding aerial ability; he is the all-time top scorer of headed goals in Italian league history. He also excelled at finding space to anticipate opponents and get on the end of passes. Despite being primarily a goal-scoring striker, he was also capable of providing assists to teammates, which was aided by his ability to use his…

Born in Bologna, Italy, to active professional footballer Roberto Vieri and Christiane "Nathalie" Rivaux, Vieri is of Italian and French descent as his mother was born in Casablanca and raised in Paris. He spent the first years of his life in the capital of the Emilia-Romagna region while his Prato-born father played for Bologna. With Roberto Vieri's 1977 transfer to Marconi Stallions, the family moved to Sydney, Australia, residing in the suburb of Wetherill Park in South Western Sydney, where young Christian attended Patrician Brothers' College, Fairfield. It is from his father that he inherited his nickname Bobo which he carried with him throughout his career. During his time in Australia, Vieri developed a love for both football and cricket, a sport he still follows to this day. He stated in an interview that he would have liked to have been a professional cricketer. His younger brother, Massimiliano "Max" Vieri, was also a professional footballer and was an Australian international in 2004. Vieri played for Marconi Juniors when he was a child, but his family subsequently moved back to Italy. In an interview at the 1998 FIFA World Cup, Vieri named his all-time sporting hero as Australian cricketer Allan Border, and said that as a child he was better at cricket than football.