TO be a relentlessly world-class finisher, a striker is traditionally expected to divorce himself from emotion, if only for a moment. Dead-eyed marksmen, ice in their veins, that sort of thing. Every now and then, there’s a goalscorer who relies not on shutting out his adrenaline, but using it as a sort of gasoline – combusting it into goal after explosive goal.
If it hadn’t been for the influence of Mario Kempes and the 1978 World Cup on a nine-year-old Gabriel Batistuta, football’s loss could have been basketball’s – or even the medical profession’s – gain. Fortunately, we can only imagine what it would be like to witness him slam-dunking or trying to be gentle with that little hammer that tests someone’s knee reflex.
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The first three seasons of Batistuta’s career hinted at a journeyman existence: after first suffering homesickness with Newell’s Old Boys, and then the disciplinarian whims of Daniel Passarella at River Plate, he finally settled into what would become his primary footballing purpose. His hairstyle was well on its way to its wild peak, his physique a little way behind, but Batistuta’s right foot was already a fully-formed weapon by the time he arrived in Buenos Aires.
A move across town to Boca Juniors brought a respectable haul of 13 goals in 1990/91, a season that ended with a defeat on penalties to Newell’s in the Championship decider. In the fallout, agents were galvanised into action. Mid-table Serie A side Fiorentina were offered the services of Boca’s Diego Latorre – dubbed the “Good Diego” by El Grafico magazine, with the proviso that they also took Batistuta in a package deal.
By that point, the pair’s CVs had already been enhanced by their roles in helping Argentina to the 1991 Copa America title. Batistuta scored six times on the way, sparking a run of a dozen goals in his first year of international football – including the dissection of a Welsh wall in the quaint curiosity that was the Kirin Cup, much to the disgust of Neville Southall.
Thrust into the A-list world of Serie A – at the point unquestionably the best league around – Batistuta held his own. He scored on his home debut, lashing the ball home from three yards and then embarking on what would become a familiar journey: leaping over the advertising hoardings brandishing both fists in celebration. Thirteen goals in Serie A – miles behind Marco van Basten, but level with Karl-Heinz Riedle and Ruben Sosa – was a promising situation for a 22-year-old’s first European season.
Another 16 goals followed in 1992/93 but Fiorentina nevertheless slipped down to Serie B, going through four managers, a 7-3 battering from Milan and a swiftly-withdrawn away kit that featured some accidental swastikas. That would surely have been an appropriate time for Batistuta to thank the fans for their support, jump ship and join a more established Serie A force.
Instead, along with captain Stefan Effenberg, he stayed to drag them back up again, scoring another 16 goals. He also experienced the irresistible glamour of the Anglo-Italian Cup, scoring against Southend United and offering the tantalisingly un-YouTube-able spectacle of Gabriel Batistuta sharing a pitch with Brett Angell, Tommy Mooney and Ricky Otto.
As if life couldn’t get more exciting than that, Batistuta would experience a headline-grabbing summer after safely returning his club to their rightful place. By the time Argentina travelled to USA ‘94, he was now established as their first-choice striker, with 20 goals in 33 games. Even the blindest swing of his right boot was paying off.
He kicked things off with a hat-trick against Greece in Boston, a display of explosive finishing eclipsed only by Diego Maradona’s terrifying, amphetamine-fuelled goal that proved to be the master’s World Cup farewell, with Argentina following him home not long afterwards.
Taking note, presumably among more illustrious would-be suitors, were the mighty Ipswich Town. The Independent reported an agreement worth £2.9m between the clubs, with manager John Lyall clearly seduced by Batistuta’s emphatic arranged marriages of ball to goalnet.
Just how close that deal ever came isn’t entirely clear – Ipswich eventually signed Lee Chapman and Alex Mathie, which suggests their actual ambitions were a bit lower. Back in the real world, Batistuta and Fiorentina were soon back in the middling comforts of the top flight, but their no.9 was keen on making up for a season of lost time. He scored 28 times in 1994/95; the finishing was becoming even more spectacular, as were the celebrations. Each goal was now a satisfyingly unsophisticated, straight-to-VHS action movie:
Now being supplied by the swaggering Rui Costa from midfield, Batistuta was unstoppable, and Fiorentina were finally blossoming too. In 1996, they finished fourth in Serie A and claimed the Coppa Italia – their first silverware in over 20 years – to propel themselves into European football again. Rather than hosting Southend, Batistuta was now gracing the Nou Camp, to devastating effect. For once, in his own stunning 1996/97 season, Ronaldo was a mere support act in the Cup Winners’ Cup semi-final to Batistuta’s headline act of getting the ball out from under his feet and Giving it the Absolute Hammer.
The more goals that flew in, the more unlikely-sounding the transfer stories that surfaced. Rangers – apparently not satisfied with signing a 35-year-old Mark Hateley – were reportedly quoted £10m to take Batistuta off Italian football’s hands. They settled instead for Marco Negri, whose astonishing SPL goalscoring run makes you wonder just how many the 28-year-old, peak-of-his-powers “Batigol” might have buried against Kilmarnock and St Johnstone.
And so Batistuta stayed put again. After seven seasons in Italy, he’d moved beyond the 150-goal mark in barely 200 games. His second World Cup brought another five goals despite the draconian demands of Passarella, now Argentina coach and infamously averse to players with long hair. Batistuta’s domestic form forced a compromise of sorts (he trimmed his mane to just below the ears) and he was soon punishing international also-rans for daring to get in his way.
Towards the end of the 1990s, if Fiorentina’s failure to break out to the next level was testing Batistuta’s patience, he was hiding it well. Or, alternatively, he was taking all his Scudetto-less frustration out on the nearest available football. One harshly-adjudged Milan backpass at the San Siro in 1998, for example, resulted in a rare but beautiful combination: Gabriel Batistuta + an indirect free kick at a range of precisely six yards. The utter, frozen fear of the five-man “wall” on the line here is worth watching a few times, for a start.
Elsewhere, Vicenza were on the wrong end of what happened when a set-piece was tapped into Batistuta’s rampaging stride, further proof there’s no finer shape the body can contort itself into than that of a footballer who has just hit the ball so hard that both feet have been yanked upwards from the turf.
A third-place finish for Fiorentina in 1998/99 – with another 26 goals for their main man, obviously, plus a 10-foot statue at one end of the Stadio Artemio Franchi – did at least provide a seat at European football’s extended top table.
Perhaps the lack of regular Champions League football is what kept Batistuta out of the very top tier of elite operators. He had been yo-yo-ing around the voting for the Ballon d’Or – 20th in 1995, 13th in 1996, a lowly 23rd in 1997, back up to 6th in 1998 – and desperately needed his weapons of mass destruction to reach a wider audience.
“I was happy for Ronaldo,” he said after the Brazilian became FIFA World Player of the Year for 1997, “but I still don’t know what the criteria is to win the award.”
Once again, any lingering irritation was channelled into constructive pursuits. A visit to Wembley’s Champions League tenants Arsenal in 1999 began with a crunching tackle on Lee Dixon, and peaked with the glorious mismatch that was Gabriel vs Nigel.
Although Winterburn had been taken out of the game with one drag of the ball, Batistuta was now running out of Wembley turf. Fortunately, there’s no such thing as an “acute angle” when you’re planning on power over placement. David Seaman’s near post efforts look less like a goalkeeper and more like a terrified bank clerk not doing anything stupid while a robber’s gun is being pointed in their face.
Later in the competition, Batistuta found his level. Manchester United were surely the most persistent enquirer for his signature, first approaching in 1998 when a move to England piqued his interest. “There are various teams that interest me,” he said that summer, “but the most important thing for me would be that they would allow me to fight for the championship.
“Manchester United, Liverpool or Arsenal, no problem, they are all very good. In two or three years, it is a possibility.”
Those two years later, in fact, all Old Trafford got from Fiorentina was a violent kick up the backside, and arguably the most Batistutian goal of them all: the use of the left foot purely as a courier of the ball to the right foot (a move that was now as automatic to him as breathing in and out) and, without one single look or care about where the goal or Mark Bosnich were, unleashing hell.
“If I ever leave Fiorentina I would very much like to go to Manchester United,” he had told the Observer, “because out of the three best teams in Europe – United, Lazio and Barcelona – Manchester, in my opinion, is the best.” Batistuta clearly wanted to keep the door ajar, even if United chairman Martin Edwards refused to consider shoehorning the 31-year-old’s extortionate pay package into their wage structure.
Finally, though, the trophy-hunting itch became too much. Whoever wanted to scratch it would need to pay for the pleasure, though: Roma obliged with £23.5m, a record fee for a 31-year-old that still stands, a handsome wage to go with it.
Batistuta signed off in Florence with a hat-trick in front of his statue, which was promptly taken down by heartbroken Fiorentina fans, and he moved his one-man nuclear stockpile to the capital.
Any slight suspicions that Roma had taken a hugely expensive risk were eliminated by 10 goals in Batistuta’s first 10 Serie A games wearing the unfamiliar maroon. He’d go on to score 20 in the league, two of which carried monumental significance.
At the Stadio Olimpico in late November, Batistuta went over to the visiting Fiorentina fans to salute them. Eighty three minutes later, with the game scoreless, he did what he had to do. It probably didn’t help that he did it like this:
Roma manager Fabio Capello, not one to linger over sentiment, declared the goal a “masterpiece” even if it had driven Batistuta to tears of guilt. “I did not want to punish Fiorentina”, he said. “Sometimes, though, we have to do things that we don’t want to. Now and again I think that certain games should not be played.”
Six months later, Batistuta’s 20th goal would crown Roma’s first Scudetto win in nearly two decades, and the only league title of his 13-year European career. It was his left foot that marked the occasion for once, rifling home the third in a 3-1 win over Parma, and Batistuta’s cup runneth very much over.
“I wanted to score so I could make my contribution to this match. My heart is going to burst. I am so happy.”
A decade of blood, sweat, tears and goals was reaching a perfect climax – Batistuta was complete. Nothing could take the gloss off – not two more injury-hit seasons with Roma, nor the stories linking him with Fulham or West Ham.
Not even the glaringly below-his-level final chapter in Qatar, where – along with Effenberg, Pep Guardiola, Claudio Caniggia and Fernando Hierro – Batistuta played on auto-pilot in front of half-empty Doha stadiums.
Twenty five goals in 21 games, even with chronic pain in his ankles, barely deserves to be counted alongside his 184 Serie A strikes.
Ultimately, most of his 350 goals for club and country were celebrated – with a manic, violent glee – as if they were the last he’d ever score. “Batistuta does not worry about creation, destruction is his thing”, the Independent wrote at his peak in 1998, because there was rarely anything routine about his goalscoring, no matter what volume it arrived in.
Batistuta was certainly capable of the occasional deft finish when the occasion demanded it, but the occasion very rarely demands it. No player has ever made raw power look so stylish.
