Alessandro Del Piero Top Greatest Living Footballers ~ Top Greatest Player Football

Alessandro Del Piero, Cavaliere Ufficiale OMRI (born November 9, 1974 in Conegliano Veneto) is an Italian World Cup-winning footballer. He currently plays for Juventus in Italy.
Pelé named Del Piero in the FIFA 100, a list of the 125 greatest living footballers selected by Pelé as a part of FIFA's centenary celebrations while Brazilian star Ronaldinho proclaimed that Del Piero is his idol. Del Piero was also voted in the list of best European players for the past 50 years in the UEFA Golden Jubilee Poll. In the year 2000, Del Piero was the world's best-paid football player from salary, bonuses and advertising revenue. Currently, Del Piero is still the highest earning Italian Player.
Along with three awards in Italy for gentlemanly conduct he has also won the Golden Foot award, which pertains to personality and playing ability.
Del Piero usually plays as a supporting-striker and occasionally between the midfield and the strikers, known in Italy as the "Trequartista" position. Although he is not very tall, Del Piero's playing style is regarded by critics as creative in attacking, assisting many goals as well as scoring himself, as opposed to just "goal poaching." His free-kick and penalty taking is also highly regarded.[11] Del Piero has become famous over the years for scoring from a special " Del Piero Zone", approaching from the left flank and curling a precise lob into the far top corner of the goal.

In terms of goalscoring, Del Piero holds the all-time record at Juventus. On April 6th, 2008, Alessandro Del Piero became the all-time highest-capped Juventus player, ahead of Juve legend Gaetano Scirea. He is in sixth place in the UEFA Champions League all-time goalscorer records. Within the Italian national team, he is currently joint fourth with Roberto Baggio in the all-time scoring records.
In 1993, he transferred to Juventus F.C., and has been there ever since. Del Piero made his Serie A debut against Foggia in September 1993, scored his first goal in his next game against Reggiana after appearing as a substitute, and then grabbed a hat-trick against Parma on his first start. Juventus claimed their first Scudetto in eight years in his first season and success continued to follow. With the Turin club, he won the Serie A championship seven times (1995, 1997, 1998, 2002, 2003, 2005 and 2006), the Champions League (1996), and the Intercontinental Cup (1996). His best season was in 1997-98, when he scored 21 goals in Serie A and finished top scorer in the Champions League with 10 goals, which included a peach of a freekick against Monaco in the semi finals.
Del Piero struggled for form at the beginning of the 1998-99 season, whilst doping allegations were aimed at Juventus (they were later found innocent). In October he picked up a serious knee injury in the 2-2 draw with Udinese. This kept him out of action for the remainder of the season. Juventus struggled without him and limped home to a lowly 6th place in the league.
His nickname is Pinturicchio, in reference to a joke by Gianni Agnelli when he compared the emerging Del Piero to Baggio in a parallel between the student Pinturicchio from Perugia and the teacher Perugino. He's also been nicknamed by the fans "Il Fenomeno Vero" meaning "The Real Phenomenon", in a sort of comparison with Ronaldo, who was nicknamed "Il Fenomeno" by rival supporters of Internazionale.
One of Del Piero's greatest strengths as a footballer is his versatility, which allows him to play in a variety of attacking positions. While he started his club career playing as a full-fledged striker, he settled into a deeper role as a support-striker. He has also been positioned as a playmaker in the central slot behind the forwards. Under Marcello Lippi's reign as Juventus coach Del Piero played in the "trident-attack" formation along with veterans Gianluca Vialli and Fabrizio Ravanelli. After that, he took a role in a combination with Zinedine Zidane behind Filippo Inzaghi. As Juve's playing style changed in Lippi's second stint with Juventus starting 2001, Del Piero partnered with Zidane's replacement Pavel Nedvěd in midfield and David Trezeguet upfront.

Del Piero is currently the all-time top scorer for Juventus scoring 254 goals, in all competitions he has also made over 580 appearances in official matches for the club breaking the record of Gaetano Scirea who has 552 appearances for Juventus. Alessandro is still Juventus' main strike force.
On May 17, 2008, against Sampdoria in the final round of the season, Del Piero at last clinched his first Serie A golden boot by scoring his 20th and 21st.
On October 21, 2008, he scored in Juve's Champions League match at home against Real Madrid. In the 5th minute, he knicked in the ball giving Casillas no chance, with Amauri scoring the second in the first few minutes of the second half.
In the return fixture on November 5, he scored two goals, the latter of which was a sublimetrademark free-kick, which looped over the heads of the crumbling wall-of-defenders to nestle in the corner of Iker Casillas' goal. In this occasion the Real Madrid's fan granted to Del Piero a standing ovation for his performance. This fine display put Juventus through to the next round of the UEFA Champions League with 10 Points, and leave Real Madrid fighting it out with Zenit St. Petersburg and BATE for the final qualifying spot.
Del Piero scored his 250th goal for Juventus during a match against Reggina on November 29, 2008.
Del Piero is currently the team's fourth all-time leading scorer. His tournament debut was Euro 96, but made his only appearance in the first half of a match against Russia before being substituted at halftime. Del Piero competed with fan favorite Roberto Baggio for a spot on the 1998 FIFA World Cup final roster while struggling to recover from injury suffered during the 1998 Champions League final with Juventus. He also missed two chances in Italy's 2-1 loss to France in the Euro 2000 final.

He returned to the international scene in the 2002 FIFA World Cup, after a season in Serie A in which Juventus won the Scudetto. Del Piero scored the decisive goal against Hungary, which sealed the Azzurri's qualification for the finals. He instantly scored against Mexico after coming on as a substitute to send Italy through to the second round, where they were eliminated. After Euro 2004, Marcello Lippi was replaced by Fabio Capello as Juventus coach. Capello was not convinced of Del Piero's abilities and frequently benched him in favor of new signing Zlatan Ibrahimović, but Del Piero still managed to score 14 goals as Juventus won their 28th league title thanks to his spectacular overhead assist to teammate David Trezeguet which proved decisive in a crunch match against AC Milan at San Siro.
Del Piero began the 2006 World Cup on the bench, appearing in two out of three group stage matches, and made his first start of the competition in a 1-0 round-of-16 win over Australia on June 26. On July 4, Del Piero entered as a substitute near the end of regulation and scored Italy's second goal in a 2-0 semifinal win over host Germany. In the final against France, which ended 1-1 after extra time, Del Piero scored a penalty in the shootout as Italy won the tournament for the fourth time. He admitted afterwards that winning the World Cup was his childhood dream.
As of 2008, Del Piero has captained Italy seven times (including the world cup in 2006 and Euro 2008) . He also regularly wore the number 10, but later gave it to Francesco Totti and switched to the number 7, as it was the first number he wore at the start of his career. Even though the number 10 was vacated after Totti retired from the national team in July 2007, Del Piero denied any interest in taking back the number, saying he was satisfied with the number 7. On May he was recalled by popular demand to Italy's UEFA Euro 2008 squad after nine-month absence from international duty, and thus became the second Italian player to participate in 7 major international tournaments (EURO 1996, 2000, 2004, 2008; World Cup 1998, 2002, 2006).
Del Piero was called up to Italy's squad for the UEFA Euro 2008 Championship in Austria and Switzerland. On June starts just one game at UEFA Euro 2008 as Italy go out in quarter-finals. Italy qualified through the group stage in second-place behind Holland, eliminating Romania and France. In the quarter-final against Spain, Del Piero made a substitute appearance during extra-time, and with the game ending in a 0-0 draw, it was decided by a penalty shootout. Spain won 4-2. On 20 August 2008 wins 90th cap for Italy in friendly against Austria - only fifth Azzurri player to reach this landmark and after few days announces that he will carry on playing until he is 40 years old. Due to his great playing and record number of appearances and goals he is referred to as "The Old Master" and "Il Padrino".(wikipedia)