WE have been taking a look at some of the great names from our many opponents to have graced the pitch at Ibrox Stadium.
In this edition, we take a look at the career of Alessandro Del Piero, the little forward who lit up Italian football with a 19-year stint at giants Juventus and earned a staggering 91 caps for his country. We’ll also look back on the time he ran out on the Ibrox turf.
ASK any devoted football fan about the decades of the 1990s and 2000s and get them to name their favourite strikers of those periods – chances are a lot of them will name Alessandro Del Piero as one of them. Born in November 1974 in Conegliano to the north-east of Italy, Del Piero went on to become one of the most famous Italian goalscorers of all time as he won Italian titles, Italian cups, the Champions League and of course the World Cup with his country.
It all started back at San Vendemiano, his first club, where he spent numerous years before moving on to Padova. It was here that he attracted the attention of the Bianconeri, one of Italy’s biggest of footballing institutions – Juventus. In his first season, 1993/94, Del Piero was making appearances for both the youth team and the first team at the age of just 19.
The next season saw Marcello Lippi take over as Juventus head coach and Del Piero played a more prominent role for the club that season, following a November injury to legend Roberto Baggio. Del Piero temporarily took his place in the first team alongside Gianluca Vialli and Fabrizio Ravanelli, flourishing at the opportunity, and Juventus went on to claim their first Italian title in nine years. He scored eight goals in Serie A that season and that was to be the start of something special between Del Piero and Juventus.
Despite the Turin club failing to retain their crown the following season, 1995/96, they did go all the way in Europe’s elite competition as they defeated Ajax in the Champions League Final to lift the famous trophy for a second time. Del Piero started in the Rome final alongside names such as Antonio Conte, Didier Deschamps and the two named above – Vialli and Ravanelli – as Juve won the game on penalties following a 1-1 scoreline at the end of 120 minutes of football. It was in this campaign that Del Piero visited Ibrox to face Rangers.
Del Piero wouldn’t taste European success like that again, but still sparkled at the height of club and international football for years and years. Internationally, he earned his first cap for Italy back in 1995 and it was to be the first of 91 in total for the forward, scoring 27 goals. An ever-present for Italy in this period, Del Piero scored against Germany in the 121st minute to seal an extra-time semi-final win over hosts Germany at the 2006 FIFA World Cup. He was an 86th minute substitute in the final against France and scored one of Italy’s penalties as they won the World Cup with a shootout triumph.
In total he collected six Serie A winners medals with Juve and although two of those titles were revoked in the courts thanks to the Calciopoli match-fixing scandal, it doesn’t take anything away from the individual achievements that Del Piero had in playing a key part in those two seasons for Juve. After 705 games in all competitions for Juventus, he called it a day and left Turin in 2012, moving to Australia to sign for Sydney FC. Having scored 24 goals in 48 matches in the A-League, he tried his arm in the Indian Super League with Delhi Dynamos before retiring a year later.
RANGERS fans crave the big European nights in front of a full Ibrox. When the biggest and best of the European stage visit Glasgow and the home side give them a run for their money or even send them home with their tails in between their legs by defeating them, not much can top that feeling. However, the obvious drawback to playing Europe’s elite is when they strut their stuff at Ibrox and have too much class on the night for Rangers to handle, and a positive result can’t be achieved no matter how deafening, intimidating or hostile 50,000 fans at Ibrox is. This is what happened when Juventus and Alessandro Del Piero came to Glasgow town in November 1995.
Walter Smith’s Rangers were drawn in a Champions League group with the Turin side, German giants Borussia Dortmund and Steaua Bucharest of Romania. Juventus came to Ibrox on matchday four of the group stage and by that point Rangers were looking unlikely to qualify. The week previous, Rangers were turned over in Stadio delle Alpi as Juventus, with Del Piero on the scoresheet, won 4-1. Rangers were eager to start strongly in the home encounter and despite gaining the edge in possession they failed to put the Juventus defence under any real pressure with clear-cut opportunities.
The game plan was gone after just 16 minutes when Juventus opened the scoring and that really dampened the fiery Ibrox atmosphere. Angelo Di Livio delivered a tame cross but Gordan Petric misjudged the ball and it fell to Del Piero, who was never going to pass up the opportunity that landed at his feet and he scored with ease. He collected the cross and calmly slotted the ball past Andy Goram from six yards in the Rangers goal at the Copland end.
Despite losing an early goal, an injury and suspension ravaged Rangers side battled on and caused Juventus some issues in the game, with Richard Gough and then Petric seeing headers cannon off the post within a minute of each other as Ibrox erupted in hope and support of the Gers. But the Italians gave themselves breathing space with 65 minutes on the clock as they made it 2-0 with Moreno Torricelli finishing off Vialli’s pass in style. Ravanelli teased the Gers defence two minutes from time as he waited patiently for the right moment to strike and make it 3-0, before a long-range effort from Giancarlo Marocchi sealed the 4-0 win for the Italian visitors.
That night, Del Piero joined a list of top-class players to have visited Ibrox and that was before he would lift the Champions League, World Cup and many more Italian domestic trophies. The all-round forward played a variety of attacking roles in several different eras at Juventus and for Italy and it is a significant symbol of his quality that he performed consistently at an excellent level in all of them. He undoubtedly goes down as yet another player Ibrox was lucky to have witnessed.