On Thursday, The Athletic invited our subscribers to submit questions for an exclusive interview with the former Juventus forward and Middlesbrough icon Fabrizio Ravanelli. The Italian, now 51, is isolating at his home in the Italian town of Perugia but remotely joined The Athletic for a trip down memory lane.
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Ravanelli is best known in England for a dramatic season at Middlesbrough in the 1996-97 campaign, when he became the third most expensive signing in English football at £7 million. He joined fresh off the back of lifting the Champions League as a pivotal part of Juventus’ star-studded side under Marcello Lippi.
At Juventus, he also won the UEFA Cup in 1993 and the Serie A title in 1995, before later adding a second league success with Lazio in 2000 and then joining Derby County. In his sole full season at Middlesbrough, who stunned English football by signing a litany of stars including the Brazilian pair Juninho and Emerson, he helped his new club reach both the League Cup final and FA Cup final — but his 16 Premier League goals were not enough to prevent relegation.
Here, Ravanelli discusses his memories of success at Juventus, his version of an alleged falling out with Boro team-mate Neil Cox on the morning of the FA Cup final defeat by Chelsea, and how he came within a whisker of transfers to Liverpool and Tottenham. At certain points, we stepped in to dig a little deeper on his responses to your questions. Enjoy!
The Athletic: Fabrizio, how are you finding life in isolation?
It is very difficult. It is impossible to go outside in Italy. It is very hard for me psychologically. It is now a full month at home. It is very bad in Italy, and I see on the television that it is now the same in England. When I wake up in the morning, I eat breakfast. Then I do a little in the gym. Then I help my wife make lunch. In the afternoon, I play football with my son. If there is more time, I do gardening. Then I watch some Netflix or Sky. I have started watching my old matches.
Yesterday, I watched my matches from Middlesbrough. Then the game when we won the league with Lazio. I watched my final match for Perugia when we won 1-0 with my goal. I have had many possibilities in my career, so there are lots of highlights. Don’t forget all the goals in Marseille, too, a fantastic memory for me!
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TA: We asked our readers for questions. Ready?
OK…
TA: Let’s go with a happy one. How did your famous shirt-over-the-head celebration come about? Are you aware that school kids across the nation in England copied it in playgrounds? (Jack L)
I was very happy to know this. It started at Juventus. Marcello Lippi was a fantastic man in the changing room. He would rev you up. This is where the celebration first came from. We were playing against Napoli. He said, “Guys, we are not playing well but stay easy because we will arrive to win the game because we have 11 players with real quality. When you have the possibility with fantastic quality, you can win, even in the last minute.” Then, in the last five minutes, Alessandro Del Piero gave me a fantastic ball and I scored the goal. I don’t know why I put my T-shirt over my head but I did it. And it came from Lippi’s motivation that day.
When I arrived in Middlesbrough, there was a lot of enthusiasm for me. Everyone was happy for my arrival, for Juninho, for Emerson. In the first game, I scored a hat-trick against Liverpool and the fans were crazy for Ravanelli. If I scored a goal, all the fans would put their T-shirts over their heads. We got to two finals in one season with me. We were unlucky because we were relegated as we did not go to play one game at Blackburn (and had points deducted). I do not think this thing would have been accepted nowadays.
I remember loving this period in Boro. My performance was fantastic, I scored lots of goals. I had a fantastic relationship with the chairman Steve Gibson. It was honest and frank. Everything he and the director Keith Lamb said, they followed through on.
TA: Honestly, what did you think when you arrived at Middlesbrough? (Tom W)
This is my character. I like to be professional. When I go cycling nowadays in the Italian mountains, I do the same training as a 51-year-old as the professional bike racers. The big thing, though, was that I had been in an extraordinarily professional club at Juventus. It defined my life and helped me to arrive as a big man and a big player. This mentality helped me build my family values.
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When I was in Middlesbrough, my mentality was the same as it was at Juventus. I wanted to be professional and do the maximum for the team I represented. I would do second training sessions for myself after the first session. It was very hard for me. Honestly. When you arrive after winning the Champions League in Juventus, I had everything for my training before.
When I got to Middlesbrough, there were a lot of problems at the training ground. We went to the park for training! I spoke very quickly with the manager Bryan Robson and with Gibson, telling them to build a new training ground. It was not important to buy big players if you then didn’t have a training ground for them. I told them every day, “Please, please, build a new training ground.” Now they have one of the top 10 training grounds in England.
TA: How did Boro get relegated with the amount of goals (31 goals in 48 appearances in all competitions) you scored in your lone season there? (Patrick O)
Honestly, this is just my opinion. When we built the team, we had a lot of problems at the start of the season with the defenders. We let in a lot of goals. With myself, Nick Barmby, Craig Hignett, Juninho, Emerson… we had good quality to score goals. The problem was about the defenders!
Every shot on the goal was a goal! We did not have any quality defenders. This is the first problem, but a big problem. We bought Gianluca Festa from Inter Milan and he made it better but we needed a goalkeeper. We had a lot of problems. Then Mark Schwarzer arrived and he stayed for a long time in goal, and he was excellent. At the start of the season, we did not have a good idea to build a strong team. If we started the season with the team that finished the league, we would have stayed up, for sure.
TA: What is the truth about the alleged argument between yourself and your team-mate Neil Cox on the morning of the 1997 FA Cup final? (Robert S)
Nothing, nothing. There was no problem with me and another player. In the final, every player dreams to play at Wembley. My family came over from Italy for the match. Cox… it is impossible to speak about football with Cox because he was not professional. He was not a quality player. It is impossible for me to take a relation with a player who is not professional. There was no fight. In my life, in my career, I did not fight. I don’t like this.
This was only speculation. The difficulty sometimes is there is a very big difference between four or five players and myself. I was very professional and some others were not very professional. This was a big difference in mentality in 1996. When we lost a game, for me, my life is football. For others, football is sometimes only joking. This is not correct: not for the club, not for the fans, not for the people who pay you. When you represent the club, you must be professional.
TA: Did you ever talk to players in the squad and say, “Let’s be more professional and achieve great things together”?
Many times. We had meetings in the changing room about this, with Gibson and Robson. Many times. This was the first problem in Middlesbrough, because many players were not professional. Now the mentality has changed, in every part of Europe, but especially in England. I built my career on my professionalism. I am 51 and continue to lead my life this way. If you do one job, you must be professional. This is normal to me. But for many players, this is a problem.
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TA: So to be clear, Fabrizio, there was NOT a fight?
Noooo (laughs). It is very easy to fight with Cox. Honestly. It is the same as if I would have a fight with my son if he was 14 and if I was 35. It is impossible. It is too small to call it a fight with Cox.
TA: How close were you to joining Liverpool at the end of that season in the summer of 1997? (Simon C)
I was very close to joining Liverpool and Tottenham. I tried for one month over the possibility with my agent to sign for Manchester United but it did not happen. But Liverpool was a real opportunity. The Liverpool manager Roy Evans called me when I was on holiday in the summer and said he wanted me to join the club. I said, “OK, no problem.”
After, I have no idea why, it did not happen. Liverpool, at that moment, I think it would have been a great move for me. I wanted to leave Middlesbrough because I had to play in the top flight and Middlesbrough had been relegated. I needed to be in a big league because we had a World Cup the next year in the summer of 1998. If it was not for the World Cup, I would have stayed there (in the second division), for sure.
Before leaving Middlesbrough, I received a call from Alan Sugar, the Tottenham chairman. He said to me, “Please come in to Tottenham, please come in to Tottenham.” But I was literally in the taxi to take the flight to Marseille. If this call had arrived one day earlier, I am sure I would have been in London and signed for Tottenham. It is a shame because I liked the Tottenham team. They had Teddy Sheringham, a quality player, and they had Sol Campbell behind. They or Liverpool would have been the same for me.
TA: You’ve spoken in the past of wanting to be Middlesbrough manager. Have there ever been any serious discussions about this, and is it still something you want? (Thomas P)
I have managed at Ajaccio in France and Arsenal Kiev in Ukraine. I would love to manage again and my agent, Craig Honeyman, is based in England. In life, there are many surprises. Why not? My heart is in Middlesbrough. When I arrived there, I remember the Italian flag at the Riverside, “Welcome Fabrizio”. They were fantastic with me.
I would want to do the same fantastic job as a manager as I did as a player when I scored many goals. I don’t know if I could take one day the management with Boro. But one day, it would be the best thing if I could come back to Boro.
TA: Let’s move away from Boro a little. Who is the best player you played with and the hardest defender you faced? (Christopher M)
I think Roberto Baggio was the greatest I played alongside, but also Juninho at Middlesbrough. They both helped me to score a lot of goals. Baggio was the best player for the way I play. When we won the UEFA Cup, Baggio won the Golden Ball. Juninho, though, had amazing technical qualities and he was very fast with his mind and his feet.
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TA: Was Baggio your favourite striking partner?
Actually, I think my favourite was as a three with Gianluca Vialli and Del Piero. Baggio was a fantastic player and I remember in 1995, when we won the Italian league, we scored a lot of goals, but as a three, we were the first defenders to help the team. We put a huge amount of pressure on opposing defences and this enabled Juventus to win many games and win trophies.
TA: On that note, how much tactical freedom did Marcello Lippi allow the forwards at Juventus? (Michael Cox)
The manager was very important, but the first thing he said to me, Vialli and Del Piero was how he wanted us to try to occupy every part on the pitch. I was on the right, Vialli in the middle and Del Piero on the left. We had to be the first defenders when the opponents were in possession.
It is similar to the Liverpool style under Jurgen Klopp now. Only one thing is different. The three of us were more defensively minded than Mohamed Salah, Roberto Firmino and Sadio Mane. Firmino is a fantastic player and a good striker but he also has the ability to make the last pass. Salah scores a lot of goals but he is not a defender. It is difficult to ask him to be in his own 20 metres to help the defenders. I think we did more of that side of the game.
TA: And the hardest defender?
In England, Rio Ferdinand, Jaap Stam, Campbell and Gareth Southgate. There were many fantastic defenders in England. Stam was strong and had quality technically. Sometimes you see a player on television and think maybe they are not so fast. Then you went onto the pitch against Jaap and you understand very quickly he is fast, too. For me, he was one of the absolute best in my period.
TA: On the same topic, what do you make of the evolution of the style of football in Serie A? So many goals have been scored in the current season (David R)
Now it is very easy to score goals. When I was playing, there were forwards like Michel Platini, the Brazilian Ronaldo, Baggio, and they would score maximum 20 goals per season. Now strikers score 30 or 40 goals every season. When I was playing in Italy, there was Paolo Maldini, Alessandro Costacurta, Ciro Ferrara, Franco Baresi, so many.
Now in every part of the world, it is difficult to buy one strong defender. OK, look at Virgil van Dijk. They have bought one defender and it has changed the whole situation of European football. They are very rare these days. When you pay £75 million for a defender, this used to be the money you would only pay for a striker. But now it shows how important and rare they are. So, to answer the question, if I scored 31 goals in one year in 1996-97, for sure I would score much more now.
TA: Do you think you were unlucky not to pick up more Italy caps throughout your career? The competition for places in the 1990s was incredible! (Jonathan L)
No. Remember this: I knew what would happen when I took the decision to leave the Italian league and to go to England. After winning the Champions League in 1996, I played in Euro 96 in England and I sensed straight away that the future of football would be in England. It is a fantastic atmosphere, fantastic fans. It felt totally different to other parts of Europe. It felt like the future. After that, it started to be the best league in the world.
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TA: Ciao Fab! How did you find Jim Smith as manager when you came to us here in Derby? What was it that convinced you to join us? Grazie! (Jack R)
Jim! He was a fantastic manager and a fantastic person. Big heart, honest guy. The first time I spoke with Jim, he was honest and that mattered to me. Derby had Stefano Eranio, who had played for Milan and I played with him for Italy. He convinced me to join Derby. I had won the Italian league with Lazio and everything was OK. But I had this possibility to return to England and for me, England was the best football in the world. It took only one second to decide. When one possibility arrives to take a job in England, I go, because it is the best.
TA: What kind of coach are you, Fabrizio?
I had fantastic managers. Lippi, Giovanni Trapattoni, Cesare Maldini, Arrigo Sacchi, Robson… but I want to be myself. Today, honestly, I like Pep Guardiola. But there is only one Guardiola. I have my idea of football and if one possibility arrives, I would put my body and my mind on the pitch, every day, every minute, every second to instil my ideas.
TA: Who would you enjoy working with more — Klopp or Pep? Why? (Tommy M)
Two fantastic managers. Klopp is very funny sometimes. He is hungry, and he is angry when he must be angry. Pep seems like an “English guy”, very perfect and smart. These two are the same level for me.
TA: Lastly, how did you end up at Dundee FC? Any good memories from your time there? (Bryan P)
(Laughs) It was a funny situation. I love Scotland because I love the football culture. When I was at Juventus, we played against Rangers and I just always remembered this incredible, fantastic, burning atmosphere. But then I arrived at Dundee. And it was not there. There was no chairman. No organisation. It was nothing.
It is impossible to say about Dundee because there was no club, no nothing. A funny situation. I then had the chance to go back to Perugia and I returned to my village and scored a lot of goals. I tried to keep us in the division. I scored goals against Juventus, Roma and Siena. This was the best possibility for me.
(Photo: Paolo Bruno/Getty Images)
