France’s third highest ever scorer celebrated his birthday this week.
He has won league championships in France, Italy – in two divisions – been Serie A’s top scorer, played in a Champions League final, a World Cup final, was part of France’s 1998 World Cup winning squad and famously won the European Championships with a shot from the heavens.
He scored more than a goal every other game for Monaco and Juventus and did virtually the same for the national team. He has scored two goals in just three starts for his seventh and latest club.
And this Sunday, some 7,000 miles from France, one of the biggest names in European and world football during the noughties will trot out onto a pitch in Rosario, Argentina, to play in one of the most keenly-fought derbies anywhere, Rosario Central v Newell’s Old Boys.
Happy birthday 36-year-old David Trezeguet. We hardly knew you were still playing.
He may have had one of the most garlanded careers of recent times, but Trezeguet continues to play when other former French internationals are reduced to making hand signals on live television.
And Trezeguet is indeed still playing at the top.
Newell’s Old Boys, his latest team, are the current Argentinian champions and league leaders of the Primera. A win against their dreaded rivals on Sunday and it is hard to see how life could get much better for Newell’s.
But things could be about to get even better for Trezeguet.
This week the French international who was raised in Argentina was linked with a move to an eighth club…Barcelona.
Fanciful?
Maybe but Trezeguet will certainly have not gone unnoticed by a man who played a total of 14 years for, ahem, NOB and managed them to their league title last year, Tata Martino, now manager of Barcelona.
Newell’s are also the club where a little boy called Lionel began to play football.
And he really was little then, until Barcelona offered to pay for growth hormones and took him to Spain where he is more commonly known as Leo Messi.
(As an aside, Newell’s bitter rivals, Central, were supported by another local lad, Che Guevara).
But back to Trezeguet.
The theory goes that Martino wants a little more cut and thrust upfront for his post-Pep team. A bit of ooomph to complement the triangles.
And what could be more cut and thrust than a rangy, gangly two-footed striker such as Trezeguet who has scored almost 260 goals throughout his career in a little over 400 games?
“King David” as he is called at Newell’s, may have had an illustrious career but it feels as if he has been treading water for the past few years, waiting for the inevitable retirement.
Released by Juventus in 2010, Trezeguet played in Spain for Hercules, trotted off to the UAE to play twice in three months before pitching up in Buenos Aires to play for one of the country’s grandest clubs, River Plate, the club he supported as a boy, then Newell’s
Playing and scoring for River Plate – which he did 16 times in 36 games – said Trezeguet gave him more of a thrill than anything else he had ever done on a football pitch.
Maybe Barcelona might challenge that. Maybe.
Paris Shilton 