Gabriel Batistuta - Biography

Last Editor: jodixray				Gabriel Batistuta Biography -   Name : Gabriel Batistuta Date of birth : 1 February 1969 Place of birth : Reconquista, province of Santa Fe, Argentina Height : 1.85 m Weight : 73 kg

Gabriel Batistuta Trivia -

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Gabriel Batistuta Detailed Biography -

Gabriel Omar Batistuta (born 1 February 1969 in Reconquista, province of Santa Fe, Argentina) is a world-famous former footballer. He played most of his club football at Fiorentina. He is also the all-time highest scorer for Argentina's national team. Batistuta was born on 1 February 1969 to slaughterhouse worker Omar Batistuta and school secretary Gloria Batistuta in the town of Avellaneda, Santa Fe Province, Argentina, but grew up in the near city of Reconquista. After him, his parents Omar and Gloria Batistuta had three girls named Elisa, Alejandra and Gabriela. At the age of 16 he met the love of his life on her 15th birthday (a rite of passage that is a large celebration in Argentina). It is said that Irina Fernandez completely ignored him at the beginning, but some 5 years later, on the 28th of December, 1990, Irina and Gabriel were married at the Saint Roque Church. The couple moved to Florence in 1991, and a year later their son Thiago was born. Thanks to good performances in the Italian championship and with the Argentina national football team, he gained fame and respect. He filmed several commercials, and was invited onto numerous TV shows, but in spite of this, Batistuta always remained a low-profile family figure. A hero in Florence, the city erected a life-size bronze statue of him, in recognition of his performances for Fiorentina. In 1996, during Fiorentina's 2-1 victory at A.C. Milan, he celebrated scoring the match's decisive goal by saying Te amo, Irina ('I love you, Irina', his wife) to the cameras. The mix of sex appeal and faithful partner cemented Batistuta's heart-throb reputation among Italian women. In 1997 Batistuta's second son, Lucas, was born, and a third son, Joaquín, followed in 1999. In 2000 the Batistuta family moved to Rome and two years later to Milan, following Gabriel's changes of team. In 2002, after more than 10 years in Italy, the family moved to Qatar. A fourth son, Shamel, was born in 2003. As a child Gabriel preferred other sports to football. Thanks to his height he played basketball, but after Argentina's victory in the 1978 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, he joined the local Platense junior team. While with Platense he was selected for the Reconquista team that won the provincial championship by beating Newell's Old Boys from Rosario. His 2 goals drew the attention of the opposition team, and he signed for them in 1988. He signed professional forms with Newell's Old Boys Club, whose coach was Marcelo Bielsa, who would later become Batistuta's coach with the Argentine National Team. Things didn't come easily for Gabriel 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 him down. At the end of that year he was loaned to a smaller team, Deportivo Italiano, of Buenos Aires, with whom he participated in the Carnevale Cup in Italy, ending as top scorer with 3 goals. In mid-1989 he made the leap to one of Argentina's biggest clubs, River Plate, where he scored 17 goals. However, all did not run smoothly. He had numerous run-ins with coach Daniel Passarella (with whom he had later confrontations with the national squad) and he was dropped from the squad in the middle of the season. In 1990 Batistuta signed for River's arch-rivals, Boca Juniors. Having gone so long without playing, he inititally found it hard to find his best form. However, at the beginning of 1991 Oscar Tabárez became Boca's coach, and he gave Batistuta the support and confidence to become the league's top scorer that season as Boca won the championship. In 1991, Batistuta was selected to play for Argentina in the Copa América held in Chile, where he finished the tournament as top scorer with 6 goals as Argentina romped to victory. It was during the Copa América that the vice-president of Fiorentina got the chance to see Gabriel's skills and signed for the Italian club. However, in spite of Batistuta's 13 goals, the following season Fiorentina were relegated to Serie B (second division). It took two years, and 16 Batistuta goals before the club, now managed by Claudio Ranieri returned to Serie A. In 1993 Batistuta played in his second Copa América, this time held in Ecuador, which Argentina again won. The 1994 World Cup, held in the USA, was a disappointment: after a very promising start Argentina were beaten by Romania in the Round of 16; the morale of the team seriously affected by Diego Maradona's drug-abuse suspension. On his return to Fiorentina Batistuta found his best form, becoming the top scorer of the 1994-1995 season with 26 goals and breaking Ezio Pascutti's 30 year old record by scoring in all of the first 11 matches of the season. In the 1995-1996 season Fiorentina won the Italian Cup and Super Coppa. During the qualification matches for the 1998 World Cup (with former River Plate manager Passarella now coaching the Argentinean national team) Batistuta was left out of the majority of the games after falling out with the coach. Playing in the World Cup finals themselves, he scored 5 goals in that competition, before Argentina lost 2-1 to the Netherlands in the quarter-finals. After yet another failure to win a championship of importance with Fiorentina, Batistuta started considering a transfer to a bigger team. But, in an effort to keep Batistuta, Fiorentina hired Giovanni Trapattoni as coach and promised to do everything to win the scudetto. After an excellent start to the season, Batistuta suffered an injury that kept him out of action for more than a month. Losing momentum, Fiorentina lost the lead and finished the season in third place, which at least gave them the chance to participate in the Champions League.