Javier Zanetti is a soccer player from Argentina who played as a defender and midfielder. Included in the list of 100 best football players according to FIFA. Now he is the vice president of the Internationale club. He began his professional football career in Argentina, first at the Taliers club and then at Banfield. In the period from 1995 to 2014, he played in the Italian club Internazionale (Milan), where he was a captain since 2001. From 1994 to 2011, Javier Zanetti was a regular key player in the Argentine national team, for which he spent 143 matches and scored 5 goals.
Biography
Javier Zanetti was born on August 10, 1973 in the city of Buenos Aires (Argentina). He grew up and was brought up in an Argentine working-class family with Italian roots. His father Rodolfo was a bricklayer, and his mother, Violetta Bonnazola, worked as a cleaning lady. Javier began playing soccer on a field in a suburb of the city.
Since 1982, the guy played at the Independente youth club, in which he was subsequently rejected, saying that there was not enough physical strength for productive work. After the refusal was received, the young man concentrated on studying at school, and in his free time he worked as an assistant to his father in a stone workshop. Zanetti’s biography also states that he worked as a milk deliveryman and grocery store seller. In 1991, the guy’s ambitions won, and he was accepted into the Taglieres youth team.
In 1995, Javier Zanetti signed a contract with the Italian Inter. At the same time, his compatriot Sebastian Rambert joined the “snakes”. These transfers were the first in the history of the new owner of the Internationale Massimo Moratti. And if the story of Sebastian Rambert in Serie A ended after half a season (the player did not play a single match), then Javier Zanetti was destined to become one of the greatest players in the stadium Giuseppe Meazza.
As part of the "snake" debuted on August 27, 1995 in a home match against Vicenza. In the debut season of Serie A, the Argentinean became a key player of the main team. He took part in 32 matches and scored two goals that fell to the Cremonese club.
Here he quickly gained authority among his teammates, and also ardently loved by loyal fans. Fans gave him the nickname El Tractor , because Zanetti played in an aggressive style, preventing the opponent from squeezing into his own penalty area.
Legend of Argentina and Italian Inter: defender Javier Zanetti
On the account of the Argentinean lateral record number of matches played in the entire history of the club “Internationale”. As part of the "black and blue" held 1114 games, among which 858 are considered official (and are a record). This indicator is a derivative of several more records:
- the first foreign player to account for the highest number of matches played in Serie A (615),
- the most titled soccer player of Inter (16 trophies),
- the Inter player with the most matches played in the Champions League (105).
The list does not end there. In the career of Javier Zanetti, such exotic records are distinguished, for example, as the player who played the most matches in the Champions League as the team captain (82). The Argentinean is also the oldest football player who managed to print the goal at the Club World Cup (scored a goal at the age of 37 years and 123 days).
Javier Zanetti is in fourth place among all the loyal Serie A footballers, second to masters like Paolo Maldini (647), Gianluigi Buffon (629) and Francesco Totti (619). It is worth noting that the legendary goalkeeper Gianluigi Buffon still has a chance to become the first in this list.
In the summer of 2010, according to the results of voting by sports journalists, Zanetti was awarded the Gaetano Shirea Prize. This award is given to football players whose age exceeds 30 years and whose career is called “exemplary”.
Achievements in the "Inter"
As part of the “black and blue” Javier Zanetti won 16 trophies: five Scudettes, four Copa Italy, four Supercoppa Italy, one UEFA Cup, one Champions League Cup and one FIFA World Cup.
International Achievements
In the national team of Argentina, Zanetti played in 143 matches, and this figure is also a record. Together with the blue and white, he reached the finals of the America's Cup in 2004 and 2007 and the final of the Confederations Cup in 1995 and 2005. Here, Zanetti became the silver medalist of the 1996 Olympic Games in Atlanta and the gold medalist of the 1995 Pan American Games in Mar del Plata.