Christian Vieri (born 12 July 1973 in Bologna) is a retired Italian footballer who played as a centre forward.

Vieri 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.[1] For a number of years he was regarded as one of the finest strikers in Europe, leading to him becoming the world's most expensive footballer in 1999 when Internazionale paid Lazio £32 million for his services. This record has since been broken only a handful of times.

 

Somewhat of a footballing nomad, Vieri played for no fewer than 12 clubs throughout his career. Most notable were his spells at Juventus, Atlético Madrid, Lazio and Inter; with the latter he hit the net on more than 100 occasions. Vieri has often been described as an old fashioned centre forward, due to his physical presence and outstanding aerial ability, he is the all time top scorer of headed goals in Italian league history.

 

As well as picking up several winners medals during his career, Vieri also claimed many individual honours including the Pichichi and Capocannoniere (top scorer) titles in Spain and Italy and Italian Footballer of the Year twice. He is one of Italy's highest ever World Cup scorers with 9 goals from 9 matches at the 1998 and 2002 World Cups respectively.