Background and career
Christian Vieri (Italian pronunciation: [ˈkristjaɱ ˈvjɛːri]; born 12 July 1973) is an Italian former professional footballer who played as a centre forward. Having been born in Italy, Vieri moved with his family to Australia as a child, before returning to Italy to pursue his professional career at a young age. He then spent the bulk of his career playing in Serie A. In March 2004, he was named in the FIFA 100, a list of the 125 greatest living footballers selected by Pelé as a part of FIFA's centenary celebrations.
A prolific goalscorer, he was widely regarded as one of the best strikers of his generation, leading to him becoming the world's most expensive player in 1999 when Inter Milan paid Lazio £32 million (€43 million) for his services. Something of a footballing nomad, Vieri played for 12 clubs throughout his career, mainly in Italy, but also in Spain and France. He started his career with Torino in 1991, but his most notable and successful spells were those at Juventus, Atlético Madrid, Lazio, and Inter, clubs with which he won several honours.
As well as picking up several winners' medals during his career, Vieri also claimed many individual awards including the Pichichi Trophy and Capocannoniere awards for the league's top scorer in Spain and Italy respectively, and the Serie A Italian Footballer of the Year twice. At international level, Vieri scored 23 goals in 49 appearances for Italy between 1997 and 2005. He is also one of Italy's highest ever goalscorers, with 23 goals putting him in joint ninth place alongside Francesco Graziani. More pressingly, no Italian has scored more World Cup goals than Vieri, with his combined nine goals from nine matches at the 1998 and 2002 tournaments making him the joint-highest World Cup scorer for Italy alongside Roberto Baggio and Paolo Rossi. He also took part at Euro 2004.
