Christian "Bobo" 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 the 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 joint highest World Cup scorer for Italy alongside Roberto Baggio and Paolo Rossi. He also took part at Euro 2004.
Born in Bologna, Italy, to active professional footballer Roberto Vieri and Christiane "Nathalie" Rivaux, Vieri is of Italian and French descent as his mother was born in Casablanca and raised in Paris. He spent the first years of his life in the capital of the Emilia-Romagna region while his Prato-born father played for Bologna. With Roberto Vieri's 1977 transfer to Marconi Stallions, the family moved to Sydney, Australia, residing in the suburb of Wetherill Park in South Western Sydney, where young Christian attended Patrician Brothers' College, Fairfield. It is from his father that he inherited his nickname Bobo which he carried with him throughout his career.
During his time in Australia, Vieri developed a love for both football and cricket, a sport he still follows to this day. He stated in an interview that he would have liked to have been a professional cricketer. His younger brother, Massimiliano "Max" Vieri, was also a professional footballer and was an Australian international in 2004. Vieri played for Marconi Juniors when he was a child but his family subsequently moved back to Italy. In an interview at the 1998 FIFA World Cup, Vieri named his all-time sporting hero as Australian cricketer Allan Border, and said that as a child he was better at cricket than football.
Vieri started his playing career at Marconi Stallions. Upon his return to Italy in 1988, his first club was Santa Lucia, a team from Prato, where his first coach was Luciano Diamanti, the father of the player Alessandro Diamanti. The next year he became affiliated with Prato and scored several goals in the Campionato Nazionale Dante Berretti.
The following year, he moved to Torino after being spotted by Serino Rampanti, who recommended him to the coach Sergio Vatta. The president of the Prato, Andrea Toccafondi, did not want to sell the promising striker. To convince him to sell Vieri to Torino, the Granata also had to buy the son of Toccafondi, Paolo, who was a goalkeeper. After a year in the Torino youth ranks, Vieri was given his first team debut at age 18, on 30 October 1991 in the 1991–92 Coppa Italia under Emiliano Mondonico; he scored the second goal in a 2–0 win for Torino against Lazio. On 15 December of the same year, he made his official debut in Serie A during the final minutes of a home game against Fiorentina (2–0). He would later score his first goal in the league in a match won 4–0 against Genoa. At the end of the 1991–92 season, Vieri would pick up a runners up medal as an unused substitute in the 1992 UEFA Cup final, lost on away goals to Ajax.
In November 1992, Vieri was sold to Serie B club Pisa, scoring two goals in 18 appearances. He would only stay in Pisa for one season, moving to fellow Serie B side Ravenna for the 1993–94 season, where he scored 12 goals in 32 appearances. He was subsequently transferred to another Serie B club for the 1994–95 season, Venezia, where he scored 11 goals in 29 appearances.
After three seasons in Serie B, Vieri returned to Serie A for the 1995–96 season, when he joined Atalanta, scoring 9 goals in 21 appearances across all competitions, also reaching the 1996 Coppa Italia final, where they lost out to Fiorentina.
His first big move came when he was signed by Juventus from Atalanta for a fee of €2.5 million for the 1996–97 season. He made 23 appearances and scored 8 goals in Serie A, and six goals in ten matches in Europe, making him joint top scorer for Juventus that season along with Alen Bokšić. He ended his season at Juve by winning the 'Scudetto and starting in the 3–1 UEFA Champions League final loss to Borussia Dortmund.
Vieri's form for Juventus attracted the attention of Spanish side Atlético Madrid who paid £12.5 million to sign the striker in 1997. He was part of a £45 million spending spree for the club owned by Jesús Gil that season, alongside Juninho Paulista.
Vieri made his debut for Atlético on 30 August 1997 in a 1–1 draw with Real Madrid at the Santiago Bernabéu Stadium on the first day of the La Liga season. He scored his first goal on 16 September, a penalty in a 2–1 home win against Leicester City in the first round of the UEFA Cup. Eleven days later he opened his league account with two goals in a 3–3 home draw with Celta. In October, he scored back-to-back hat-tricks in a 5–1 win at Real Zaragoza and a 5–2 home win over PAOK in the quarter-finals of the European competition. On 21 March 1998, he scored four times away to Salamanca, but the Rojiblancos lost 5–4.
He scored a total of 24 goals in 24 league appearances for Atlético and finished the season with 29 goals from 32 appearances, which saw him receive the Pichichi Trophy as the league's top scorer.
Vieri stated in his 2015 autobiography that his 1997 transfer to Atlético was motivated purely by financial reasons—revealing that Juventus would only pay him an annual salary of L.2 million while the Spanish club were offering the equivalent of L.3.5 million. He furthermore asserted: "If I could have turned back time, I’d have stayed in Turin".
Vieri also revealed a funny story about the aforementioned back-to-back hat-tricks against Real Zaragoza and PAOK. Before the match with PAOK, Vieri made a bet with Jesús Gil: if he had scored a hat-trick, the President would have given him a Ferrari. The striker did find the net three times, with the third goal, scored from the goal line, being one of the most iconic moments of his career, and Gil made him choose his gift car. However, Vieri never picked up his Ferrari at the end of the season, as he felt he had betrayed the President leaving Atlético after just one year.
After his performances for Atlético and at the 1998 World Cup, Vieri returned to Serie A with Lazio for a fee of €25 million. He partnered Chilean international Marcelo Salas for the Rome-based club, managed by Sven-Göran Eriksson. He had a successful season, scoring 14 goals in 28 appearances, and won the Cup Winners' Cup. He scored the first goal of the 2–1 win over Mallorca in the final at Villa Park on 19 May, the last match in the tournament's history.
The following season Vieri was the subject of a then world record transfer of €49 million (90 billion Italian lire, £32 million) to Inter Milan after drawing the attention of chairman Massimo Moratti and manager Marcello Lippi, who had requested the player after their successful season together at Juventus. Inter would be Vieri's ninth club in his ninth season of being a professional footballer, and the only one where he would play for more than one season, for a total of six.