The tale of "Il Bobo" Vieri
Ronaldo, Shearer, Klinsmann, Suker, Del Piero, Raul, Owen, Batistuta, Crespo, and Shevchenko are some of the strikers who shared a generation with Christian Vieri, yet the Italian was considered one of the best of his era. Vieri became the top scorer in both the Spanish and Italian leagues, the best player in Serie A, and a Ballon d'Or nominee. Despite this, he is generally remembered as a clumsy striker with poor technique. We will review his career here to find out why he was such an interesting striker as he was.
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How it all started - the beginning of the career
Christian Vieri was born in Bologna, Italy, on July 12, 1973, to a French-Moroccan mother and an Italian father, who was a football player at the time. Christian was born in Bologna because his father, Roberto Vieri, had just been signed by the city's club and moved there from Roma. Roberto was nicknamed "Bobo," and from there, Christian inherited the nickname, which he was known by throughout his career. In 1977, the family moved to Australia after Roberto signed with the Marconi Stallions. A year later, Christian's younger brother, Maximiliano, was born and would also become a football player.During the years that the Vieri family was in Australia, Christian developed a love for football, which was logical given that his father was a football player, but he also developed a love for cricket and in fact, Christian himself would declare many years later that, at that time, he played both sports but that he considered himself better at cricket than at football. Despite Roberto's retirement as a football player in 1982, the family continued to live in Australia until 1988 and Christian was playing football for the Marconi Stallions until then, when they decided to return to Italy.
At 16, upon returning to Italy, Christian played for Santa Lucia, Prato, and finally Torino, where he made his professional debut at 18 in a Coppa Italia match, where he scored a goal. At the time, Torino was in Serie A and didn't really give him many opportunities to play, so in 1992 he signed for Pisa, then in Serie B, where he enjoyed more continuity, although without scoring many times. After a year, he signed first for Ravenna and then for Venezia, both in Serie B. In those two seasons, he scored 23 goals in the second tier, earning his return to Serie A, and this time it was Atalanta who signed him.
In top teams
In Bergamo, he would spend just one season, scoring nine goals in 21 matches across all competitions, attracting the attention of several major Italian clubs, not precisely for his goal-scoring numbers, but for his physical strength, finishing, heading, and ability to break offside traps. In 1996, his opportunity came to sign for Juventus (the club where his father also played and where his brother played in the youth teams) for 2.5 million. This was a summer that also saw the arrival of his Atalanta teammate, Paolo Montero, and Zinedine Zidane from Bordeaux.That season he would alternate between being a substitute and a starter, although he managed to score 14 goals in 37 matches played. But above all, it would be his best season in terms of titles, as that year he would win the Serie A, the European Super Cup and the Intercontinental Cup. They would also reach the UEFA Champions League final, which they would lose to Borussia Dortmund, where Vieri was in Juventus starting eleven. Maintaining his pace of changing teams annually, in the summer of 1997, he signed for Atlético Madrid for around 15 million euros, as part of a significant investment the Madrid club wanted to make in order to win the double again, as they had done a couple of years earlier.
That 1997-98 season would be Vieri's international breakthrough, as he scored 24 goals in 24 league matches and 29 in 32 matches across all competitions, making him Spain's top goalscorer. In Madrid, he scored a hat trick after making a bet with the club's owner, Jesús Gil, that if he scored three goals in that match, he would be given a Ferrari. In 1997, he also made his debut with the Italian main national team after spells with the youth national teams, winning the European Under-21 Championship twice. At the end of that season, he was called up by Cesare Maldini for the 1998 FIFA World Cup in France, where he became the tournaments second best scorer (tied with Gabriel Batistuta) with five goals, behind only Davor Suker, who scored six.
After the World Cup, he returned to Italy to sign for Lazio for 25 million euros, joining the team managed by Sven-Goran Eriksson and which included players such as Roberto Mancini, Pavel Nedved, Sinisa Mihajlovic, Alessandro Nesta, Dejan Stankovic, Matías Almeyda and Marcelo Salas. That season the Roman team managed to win the UEFA Cup Winners' Cup and the Supercoppa Italiana in addition to finishing second in Serie A. Vieri scored 14 goals in 28 appearances for Lazio.
Once again, he changed teams for just one season, his time to Inter Milan for 49 million, making him the most expensive player in history up to that point. Vieri shared the front line with world-class players such as Ronaldo, Ivan Zamorano, and Roberto Baggio. For the first (and only) time in his professional career, he would spend more than one season at a club. In fact, he spent six seasons at the Milanese club, where he played 190 matches and scored 123 goals, although, incredibly, he only won one Coppa Italia in 2005 during that period. During his time at Inter, he was called up by Giovanni Trapattoni for the 2002 FIFA World Cup, where he scored four goals.