Player Focus: Age Proving No Object for In-form Luca Toni

Luca Toni has thought about hanging up his boots more than you might think. The first time happened when he was only 20. He was playing for Fiorenzuola in the third division. Toni scored just twice all season. They were relegated. It was the worst moment of his professional career. “Cavasin [their combustible coach] insulted me every day,” Toni told La Gazzetta dello Sport, “and I considered quitting.” The reason why he didn’t is a romantic one. He met a girl, Marta. She changed his life and gave a hopeless footballer - Cavasin’s opinion, not mine - a renewed sense of purpose.

Behind every good man, there’s a good woman, they say, and Toni’s case really is no different. Marta has been his strength. Expecting their first child three years ago, an earthquake in the striker’s hometown of Modena meant they had to move the place of birth to Turin instead. Tragically, they lost the baby. “Tell us what’s the latest, doctor?” he recalls asking, “Tell us’. They didn’t have the courage to speak. They looked at us. I still remember their eyes even now when I am on the pitch. They just said to us: ‘We’ll try another machine. Maybe this one isn’t working’. But no. It was Mattia’s heart. Mattia. That’s what we were going to call our first son.”

Toni has his name tattooed on one of his biceps. “What Marta taught me in the days that followed has no price. I really understood just how strong the woman I was with was. ‘I’ll take care of everything,’ she said. ‘We’ll have another one straightaway’, and three months later she was pregnant again.” Toni had been playing in Dubai with Al Nasr, the archetypal retirement destination. He was 35 and giving serious thought to leaving it all behind again. “But Marta told me she couldn’t stand me being at home all the time. ‘Go on,’ she said. ‘Keep playing’.”

Siena had made him an offer but it was taken off the table after their relegation to Serie B in 2012. It looked like Marta would have to get used to having him around. Luckily for her Dimitar Berbatov let Fiorentina down in the final hours of transfer deadline day. Toni’s phone rang. It was Andrea Della Valle, his old employer, calling to see if he would fancy wearing purple again five years after he had left the club for Bayern Munich.

Toni scored eight goals but it became abundantly clear to him that Fiorentina had other ideas for his position the following season. Giuseppe Rossi had been signed from Villarreal and was completing his return from a series of knee injuries. Just like at Bayern, the arrival of Mario Gomez, signalled the end for him at the Artemio Franchi. Toni didn’t have a future at Fiorentina. Not as a player. “I often remind him, as a joke,” Hellas coach Andrea Mandorlini said recently, “that they offered him the job of coaching their Under-16s.”

He’s been laughing ever since. Twice Toni struck on his debut to condemn Milan to defeat on the opening day of last season. And these strikes weren’t like any other either. “The two goals are for Marta and my daughter Bianca [born two months earlier],” Toni explained. “I didn’t score a third because I wouldn’t know who to dedicate it to.” If he’s ever on a hat-trick in the future, he will know. Bianca now has a baby brother Leonardo.

The Milan game wasn’t the last final flashes of a player raging against the dying of the light. Toni lit up Verona’s season. He finished vice-capocannoniere behind Torino’s Ciro Immobile. Only once throughout his time in Serie A had he bettered his 20-goal campaign. That was the year of Italy’s World Cup triumph when he found the net 31 times for Fiorentina and got to wear the Golden Boot. There was a clamour for Cesare Prandelli to take him to Brazil.

Few thought Toni could repeat those exploits this season. He’s a year older. Romulo and Juan Manuel Iturbe had left for Juventus and Roma. Of the 12 assists they laid on last term, 7 ended with the World Cup winner doing his trademark celebration. Without them playing for him it was going to be more of a struggle and Toni went six games without finding the net in the autumn. It looked like it was going to be a long hard winter. He went into the break with five goals and didn’t look like he’d be contending for another Capocannoniere title. But the last goal before Christmas was of great satisfaction.

It came at the Friuli. Udinese fans were holding pieces of card aloft with ‘Toto 200’ written on them. Antonio Di Natale, their talisman, who was born, like Toni, in 1977, had reached that landmark in Serie A goals a fortnight earlier and he nodded the home side in front after half an hour. Toni equalised on the stroke of half-time, ran over to the sidelines where he was given a T-Shirt to mark the 300th goal of his career. “It was a perfect day,” he smiled. Toni had fixed that number as something to aim for when he joined Hellas. Now that he’d made it, though, he wasn’t about to relax and put his feet up.

Along with Mohamed Salah and Felipe Anderson he is one of the most in-form players in Italy this spring. Nine goals in his last eight appearances tells its own story. He has 10 this calendar year. Two more than any other player. Only Carlos Tevez [13] has scored in more matches [12] over the course of the championship. Toni is wasting no time in writing himself into Verona’s history books. His doppietta against Cesena on Saturday made it 15 league goals for the season and 35 since he started representing the Gialloblu. After moving past Preben Elkjaer, the hero of the club’s 1985 Scudetto, Toni matched Ciccio Mascetti as Verona’s all-time top scorer in Serie A.

“He’s a champ,” Mandorlini shrugged. “I hope he stays another year. It would be a shame if he stopped.” Toni had been contemplating doing his coaching badges when he joined Verona. “I’ll enrol on the Super Course and find out whether its for me or not,” he said. “It makes me smile seeing Rino Gattuso on Palermo’s bench. I said to him: ‘They’ll get rid of you after your first game’.” Watching what has happened to some of his former teammates however has brought a change of perspective. “I look at Pippo [Inzaghi],” he admitted last month, “and he’s aged 10 years since he took the Milan job. I think about how they would have made him an honorary president a few months back. Now they’re whistling him and I say to myself: ‘That’s why I’ll never be a coach’.”

So what will he do? Toni’s body isn’t breaking down on him. He has played 63 games for Verona. He admits that the league has become a little easier too. “When I started out in Serie A in 2000 you had to be very technical. Today it’s a very physical game. The standard of Serie A has fallen. Many stars have left and we haven’t kept up with our stadiums. Before there were the Seven Sisters and then a big drop to the rest. Now there’s more chance for other teams to emerge.”

Perhaps that’s reason enough for Toni to keep going then. Asked in 2006 how long he realistically thought he could carry on playing, he famously quipped: “Well, I can’t possibly get any slower, can I? So I might as well play on forever.” One imagines his answer would be the same now.

Should Luca Toni hang up his boots on a high or play on for one more season at Verona? Let us know in the comments below