Gabriel Batistuta

Lore & Background

Batistuta was born on 1 February 1969 to slaughterhouse worker Omar Batistuta and school secretary Gloria Zilli, in the town of Avellaneda, but grew up in the nearby city of Reconquista. He has three older sisters, Elisa, Alejandra, and Gabriela. Batistuta is a Roman Catholic. At the age of 16, he met Irina Fernández, his future wife, at her quinceañera. On 28 December 1990, they were married at Saint Roque Church. The couple moved to Florence, Italy, in 1991, and a year later their first son, Thiago, was born. In 1997, Batistuta's second son, Lucas, was born, his third son, Joaquín, in 1999, his fourth son, Shamel, in 2004 or 2005, and his fifth son, Uzi Isman, in 2006. In 2000, Batistuta and his family moved to Rome, where he played for Roma. Two years after Shamel was born, Batistuta was loaned to Inter. In 2003, after 12 years in Italy, the family moved to Qatar where Batistuta had accepted a lucrative celebrity playing contract with a local team, Al-Arabi, ending his career there in 2005. He moved back to Argentina in 2007. Despite having completed his coaching badges in Argentina, he currently has no involvement with football, instead (primarily as he has difficulty walking) he prefers to play polo and golf. He was quoted saying: 'I don't like football, it's only my job'. In later interviews with FIFA he expanded: 'I lived and breathed football', adding, 'when I was playing football I never enjoyed it that much, I was never happy ... if I scored two goals, I wanted a third, I always wanted more. Now it's all over I can look back with satisfaction, but I never felt that way when I was playing.' In 2006 he expressed an interest in coaching Australia's and Argentina's national team. During the 2006 FIFA World Cup, he worked as a commentator for Televisa Deportes. Batistuta currently runs his own construction company in Argentina. He also worked as technical secretary in the professional football club Colón, joining the club's staff in January 2012, and leaving at the end of the 2012–13 season. Speaking in a television interview in Argentina in 2014, Batistuta said the pain suffered in his ankles after retiring in 2005 became so intense that he 'urinated in bed with the toilet only a few steps away. I couldn't move.' He visited a doctor he knew asking his legs be amputated, but the doctor turned down his request.

Reader's Guide

As a child, Batistuta preferred other sports to football. Because of his height he played basketball, but after Argentina's victory in the 1978 FIFA 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, Batistuta joined the local Platense junior team. While with Platense he was selected for the Reconquista team that won the provincial championship following victory over Newell's Old Boys. Batistuta's two goals drew the attention of the opposition team's coach Marcelo Bielsa, and he signed a professional contract with Newell's in 1988. At Newell's Old Boys under Bielsa, things did not come easily for him 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 his progress. At the end of that year, Batistuta was loaned to a smaller team, Deportivo Italiano, with whom he participated in the Carnevale Cup in Italy, ending as top scorer with three goals. Under the guidance of Bielsa, whom Batistuta described in his autobiography as the most important coach he has ever had, and 'the one who taught me how to train on rainy days, he taught me everything', he was physically transformed, fed encouragement, and was set on the path into the player he was to become. In mid-1989, Batistuta made the leap to one of Argentina's biggest clubs, River Plate, where he scored 4 goals and River Plate won the Argentine Primera División in 1990. However, he was drawn out of the team by the new manager Daniel Passarella in the mid-season, apparently with no specific reason. According to Batistuta, they never had a dispute. Passarella declared at that time 'when Batistuta finds a team that be able to play to him he will be lethal' and highlighted his professionalism. In 1990, Batistuta joined River Plate's arch rivals, Boca Juniors. He initially found it hard to find his best form, in part not playing in his position. However, at the beginning of 1991, Óscar Tabárez became Boca Juniors' new manager and he gave Batistuta the support and put him into his best place in the field, the centre of attack, rather than as an outside forward. Batistuta finished the season as the league's top scorer as Boca Juniors won the championship.

Did You Know?

• Batistuta is the only player in football history to score two hat-tricks in different World Cups.
• He was Argentina's all-time leading goalscorer with 56 goals in 78 official matches until Lionel Messi surpassed him on 21 June 2016.