CHRISTIAN VIERI

"I'd go to restaurants in Milan with Ronaldo, and people would stand up and applaud. I thought, 'What the f**k - are we The Beatles?!'"

- Interview Arthur Renard

Everywhere Christian Vieri went, he scored goals. Only two players have ever won both Serie A’s Capocannoniere award and La Liga’s Pichichi Trophy, as top scorer: Vieri, then Cristiano Ronaldo.

Born in Italy but raised in Australia, Vieri returned home to become the Azzurri’s joint-record goalscorer at World Cups. In 1999 he became the world’s most expensive player by joining Inter for £32 million - his eighth transfer in eight dizzying years. At San Siro, the left-footed striker formed a legendary partnership with the great Ronaldo Nazario, so it’s little wonder that he is still viewed as one of the most iconic players of his generation. Today he’s an ambassador for Serie A, and he even released his own music in 2020 alongside former Inter team-mates Nicola Ventola and Daniele Adani. Entitled Una Vita da Bomber (‘The life of a goalscorer’), it was released under his nickname ‘Bobo’, which he picked up as a youngster, as the son of former Juventus striker Roberto.

“One day, a guy in the youth team at Torino said to me, ‘You know what? I'm going to call you Bobo, because your father was Bob’,” explains the 51-year-old, as he sits down with FourFourTwo in Milan. “It just came out like that, in a matter of a second - from there, everyone started calling me Bobo. I was OK with it straight away. It’s cool.”

Great days would follow for Bobo Vieri, as he recalls now...

Your dad played for Sampdoria, Juventus and Roma before taking you and the family to Sydney when you were three, in order to continue his career at Marconi Stallions. How did your own football journey start?

Jordan Lawson, Melbourne