Alessandro Matri is an Italian striker who plays for Sassuolo now. His career is drawing to a close, as he turned 32 this year. Alessandro Matri plays exclusively in the position of the central striker, being the classic “nine”, the tip of the attacks.
Club career
Alessandro Matri began his football career at the tiny Fanfulla club at the age of 11, but a year later he went through a show at Milan, where he moved to the academy. There he trained for six years, while simultaneously playing for youth squads of various levels, and in 2002 signed a professional contract with the club.
The first two years, Matri played exclusively for the double, being called up to the main team extremely rarely. For two seasons, he appeared on the field only once, so the management decided to rent it out. First, he spent one year in a small club “Prato” from Serie C, where he played 36 matches and scored five goals. Then he went on a one-year lease to Serie C, this time at the Lumezzane club, which showed a more impressive result - 14 goals in 35 matches. Then another rental year followed, this time in the club of the regional league Rimini, where Matri was again unable to impress, having scored only five goals in 30 matches.
“Milan” did not extend the cooperation with his pupil, and in the summer of 2007 for two and a half million euros Alessandro Matri moved to “Cagliari”. There, the striker was able to open up: in three and a half years he played in 127 matches, scoring 36 goals. So he attracted the attention of the strongest club in Italy - Juventus, which first rented a striker for 2.5 million euros, and then bought the rights to it for another 15.5 million euros.
Matri spent two and a half years at Juventus, playing 81 matches and scoring 29 goals, after which in the summer of 2013 Milan decided to redeem his pupil for 11 million euros. But this was another mistake; in the Rossoneri camp, Matri never played: in six months in 18 games he scored only one goal, after which he again went on lease. For a year and a half, he visited Fiorentina, Genoa, and again at Juventus, but played 47 matches in total, scoring a total of 14 goals. As a result, Matri spent the last season on loan at Lazio, where he scored 7 goals in 29 matches, and in the summer of 2016, when his contract with Milan expired, he signed a two-year agreement with Sassuolo, where he had already played seven matches, but until he could score a single goal.
Team appearances
For the Italian national team, the forward spent only seven matches, debuting in March 2011 in a game against the Ukrainian national team. He replaced and immediately scored a goal, which became the only one in his career. Since then, Matri has played six more matches, but has never scored, and the last time he went on the field in the national team shirt in June 2015.
Personal life
As for the player’s personal life, Alessandro Matri and his girlfriend Federica Narga, who works as a TV presenter, model, and also a singer, were engaged in 2009. Soon she became his wife. Federica is six years younger than a football player.