Gabriel Batistuta

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Gabriel Omar Batistuta (born 1 February, 1969 in Avellaneda, Template:Province) is a world-famous former footballer. He played most of his club football at Fiorentina. He is also the all-time highest scorer for Argentina's national team.

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Early life

Batistuta was born on 1 February, 1969 to slaughterhouse worker Omar Batistuta and school secretary Gloria Batistuta, in the town of Avellaneda, Santa Fe Province, Argentina, but grew up in the near city of Reconquista. After him, his parents had three girls, named Elisa, Alejandra and Gabriela.

At age 16 he met the love of his life, on her 15th birthday (a rite of passage that is a large celebration in Argentina). It is said that Irina Fernández completely ignored him at the beginning. Some 5 years later though, on 28th of December, 1990, Irina and Gabriel were married at Saint Roque Church. The couple moved to Florence, Italy, in 1991, and a year later their first son Thiago was born.

Thanks to good performances in the Italian championship and with the Argentine national team, he gained fame and respect. A strikingly handsome man, he filmed several commercials and was invited onto numerous TV shows, but in spite of this, Batistuta always remained a low-profile family man. A hero in Florence, the city erected a life-size bronze statue of him, in recognition of his performances for Fiorentina.

In 1996, during Fiorentina's 2-1 victory at A.C. Milan, he celebrated scoring the match's decisive goal by saying Te amo, Irina ('I love you, Irina', to his wife) for the cameras. The mix of sex appeal and faithful partner cemented Batistuta's heart-throb reputation among Argentine and Italian women.

In 1997 Batistuta's second son, Lucas, was born, and a third son, Joaquín, followed in 1999. In 2000 the Batistuta family moved to Rome and two years later to Milan, following Gabriel's changes of team.

In 2002, after more than 10 years in Italy, the family moved to Qatar where Gabriel Batistuta had accepted a lucrative celebrity playing contract with a local team. A fourth son, Shamel, was born in 2003.


Image:Batistuta.jpg

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The player

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Beginnings

As a child Gabriel preferred other sports to football. Thanks to his height he played basketball, but after Argentina's victory in the 1978 World Cup, in which he was particularly impressed by the skills of Mario Kempes, he devoted himself to football. After playing with friends on the streets and in the small Grupo Alegria club, he joined the local Platense junior team.

While with Platense he was selected for the Reconquista team that won the provincial championship by beating Newell's Old Boys from Rosario. His 2 goals drew the attention of the opposition team, and he signed for them in 1988.

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Professional

He signed professional forms with Newell's Old Boys Club, whose coach was Marcelo Bielsa, who would later become Batistuta's coach with the Argentine National Team.

Things did not come easily for Gabriel during his first year with the club. He was away from home, his family and his girlfriend Irina, sleeping in a room at the stadium, and had a weight problem that slowed him down. At the end of that year he was loaned to a smaller team, Deportivo Italiano, of Buenos Aires, with whom he participated in the Carnevale Cup in Italy, ending as top scorer with 3 goals.

In mid-1989 he made the leap to one of Argentina's biggest clubs, River Plate, where he scored 17 goals. However, all did not run smoothly. He had numerous run-ins with coach Daniel Passarella (with whom he had later confrontations with the national squad) and he was dropped from the squad in the middle of the season.

In 1990 Batistuta signed for River's arch-rivals, Boca Juniors. Having gone so long without playing, he inititally found it hard to find his best form. However, at the beginning of 1991 Oscar Tabárez became Boca's coach, and he gave Batistuta the support and confidence to become the league's top scorer that season as Boca won the championship.

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International

In 1991, Batistuta was selected to play for Argentina in the Copa América held in Chile, where he finished the tournament as top scorer with 6 goals as Argentina romped to victory.

It was during the Copa América that the vice-president of Fiorentina got the chance to see Gabriel's skills and signed for the Italian club. However, in spite of Batistuta's 13 goals, the following season Fiorentina were relegated to Serie B (second division). It took two years, and 16 Batistuta goals before the club, now managed by Claudio Ranieri returned to Serie A.

In 1993 Batistuta played in his second Copa América, this time held in Ecuador, which Argentina again won. The 1994 World Cup, held in the USA, was a disappointment: after a very promising start Argentina were beaten by Romania in the Round of 16; the morale of the team seriously affected by Diego Maradona's drug-abuse suspension.

On his return to Fiorentina Batistuta found his best form, becoming the top scorer of the 1994-1995 season with 26 goals and breaking Ezio Pascutti's 30 year old record by scoring in all of the first 11 matches of the season. In the 1995-1996 season Fiorentina won the Italian Cup and Super Coppa.

During the qualification matches for the 1998 World Cup (with former River Plate manager Passarella now coaching the Argentinean national team) Batistuta was left out of the majority of the games after falling out with the coach. Playing in the World Cup finals themselves, he scored 5 goals in that competition, before Argentina lost 2-1 to the Netherlands in the quarter-finals.

After yet another failure to win a championship of importance with Fiorentina, Batistuta started considering a transfer to a bigger team. But, in an effort to keep Batistuta, Fiorentina hired Giovanni Trapattoni as coach and promised to do everything to win the scudetto. After an excellent start to the season, Batistuta suffered an injury that kept him out of action for more than a month. Losing momentum, Fiorentina lost the lead and finished the season in third place, which at least gave them the chance to participate in the Champions League.

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Good-bye to Fiorentina

Batistuta stayed at Fiorentina for the 1999-2000 season, tempted by the chance of winning both the Scudetto and the Champions League. But, things did not go to plan and he was transferred to A.S. Roma in a deal worth 35 million US dollars.

In spite of a knee injury that kept him out for a few matches, he scored 20 goals for A.S. Roma in his first season with the club, and finally realized his dream of winning a major trophy as Roma clinched the Scudetto for the first time since 1983.

After a good series of performances by Argentina in the qualification matches for the 2002 World Cup, hopes were high that the South Americans - now managed by Marcelo Bielsa - could win the trophy, and Batistuta announced that he planned to quit the National Team at the end of the tournament, which Argentina aimed to win. But Argentina's "group of death" saw the team fall at the first hurdle, as poor results against Nigeria, England and Sweden meant that the team was knocked out in the opening round for the first time since 1962.

In 2004, he was named in the FIFA 100 list of 125 Greatest Living Footballers.

Back in Italy, Batistuta failed to find form with Roma and was loaned out to Internazionale, where he failed to make any impression. He ended his career playing in Qatar for Al-Arabi before retiring in March 2005 after a series of injuries that prevented him from playing.

He is currently the 8th top scorer of the all-time list in the Italian League with 184 goals in 318 matches between 1991 and 2003.

Also by many football fans he gained the reputation BATIGOL (which in Italian translates into "Hits Goals") for his excessive ability's to find the back of the net.

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Summary

  • Physical information: Height 1.85 m, weight 73 kg
  • First professional match: September 25, 1988. San Martín (Tucumán) 1 - Newell's Old Boys 0
  • First professional goal: May 16, 1989. Newell's Old Boys 3 - Platense 0.
  • First National Team match: March 27, 1991. Brazil 0 - Argentina 1.
  • First National Team goal: July 8, 1991. Argentina 3 - Venezuela 0.
  • Last National Team match: June 12, 2002. Argentina 1 - Sweden 1.
  • Last National Team goal: June 2, 2002. Argentina 1 - Nigeria 0.
  • 78 National Team matches with 56 goals.
  • First Division (Serie A) Italian Championship (with A.S. Roma) 2000-2001.
  • Italian Supercup with (with A.S. Roma) 2001
  • Argentine Football Writers' Footballer of the Year 1998.
  • Italian League Cup (with ACF Fiorentina) 1995-1996.
  • Second Division (Serie B) Italian Championship (with Fiorentina) 1993-1994.
  • First Division Top Scorer, 26 goals (with Fiorentina) 1994-1995
  • Copa América (with Argentina) 1991, 1993
  • Copa América Top Scorer, 6 goals (with Argentina) 1991
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Quotes

  • "[...] I was watching him in training for the first couple of days and he was one of the worst trainers I'd ever seen [...] His technique was lousy, his shots were going wide – but then he scored ten goals in the first five or six games and I realised what a player he was."

Brian Laudrup (Where are they now? Brian Laudrup, FIFA, February 3, 2006)

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External links

es:Gabriel Batistuta fa:باتیستوتا fr:Gabriel Batistuta it:Gabriel Batistuta he:גבריאל בטיסטוטה ka:ბატისტუტა, გაბრიელ nl:Gabriel Batistuta ja:ガブリエル・バティストゥータ no:Gabriel Batistuta pl:Gabriel Batistuta pt:Gabriel Omar Batistuta ru:Батистута, Габриэль fi:Gabriel Batistuta sv:Gabriel Batistuta zh:巴迪斯圖達

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