David Trezeguet

David Trezeguet

Personal information
Full name	David Sergio Trezeguet
Height	1.90 m (6 ft 3 in)
Position(s)	Striker
Team information
Current team	Hércules
Number	17
Youth career
1991–1993	Platense
Senior career*
Years	Team	Apps	(Gls)
1993–1995	Platense	5	(0)
1995–2000	Monaco	93	(52)
2000–2010	Juventus	245	(138)
2010–	Hércules	1	(0)
International career‡
1997	France U-21	5	(5)
1998–2008	France	71	(34)
*Club domestic league appearances and goals, correct as of 14 July 2010 ‡ National team caps and goals, correct as of 26 March 2008

David Sergio Trezeguet (French pronunciation: [david sɛʀʒjo tʀezeˈɡɛ]; born 15 October 1977 in Rouen, France) is a French footballer who currently plays for Hércules. He previously played for Juventus in the Italian Serie A for ten years and for the French national football team. He is the highest scoring non-Italian ever to play for Juventus. He is most famous for scoring the golden goal in the Euro 2000 final against Italy which gave France a 2–1 win in extra time.

Personal life

Trezeguet was born in Rouen. He is the son of former French-Argentinian footballer Jorge Trezeguet, who now works as his agent. Trezeguet and France's all-time leading goalscorer and former captain Thierry Henry are known to be close friends. Their friendship started while they were both playing for AS Monaco. In an interview, Trezeguet stated that Henry was like a big brother to him when they were teammates. David and his wife Béatrice have two children together: Aaron (born 18 May 2000) and Noraan (born 28 May 2008). His wife is from Alicante, Spain.

Club career

At club level, Trezeguet played for Club Atlético Platense in the Argentine Primera División, AS Monaco in Ligue 1, and Juventus in the Serie A.

Monaco

In 1998, Trezeguet scored the fastest ever goal in terms of velocity in UEFA Champions League history in a quarter-final match against Manchester United. The shot that resulted in a goal was clocked at 97.6 mp/h (157.3 km/h). With AS Monaco he won Ligue 1 twice and was named Ligue 1 Young Player of the Year in 1998. He scored a total of 60 goals in 113 appearances for the French club and it was here that he made his name as a potent goalscoring poacher.

Juventus

In his second season at Juventus he scored 24 league goals in 34 league matches to finish as the Serie A top goalscorer along with Dario Hübner of Piacenza, as Juventus won the Serie A. That same season he was named Serie A Footballer of the Year and Serie A Foreign Footballer of the Year. In the 2003 UEFA Champions League Final, Trezeguet was one of three Juventus players to have their penalty saved by AC Milan keeper Dida, as Juventus lost 3–2 on penalty kicks after a 0–0 draw. This would be the closest Trezeguet ever got to winning the UEFA Champions League. In 2004, Brazilian legend Pelé included Trezeguet in the FIFA 100 – Pelé's list of the 125 greatest living footballers.

Despite winning the 2004–05 Serie A and 2005–06 Serie A titles, Juventus were caught in the 2006 Italian football scandal that rocked Italian football, and along with AC Milan, Fiorentina, Lazio and Reggina, Juventus were accused of match fixing. While the players had no part in the scandal, Juventus were subsequently stripped off their 2004–05 and 2005–06 titles, relegated to Serie B and were to start the 2006–07 season with a deficit of 30 points (eventually reduced to 9 points on appeal). Following the enforced relegation to Serie B, the club lost several of its star players including Fabio Cannavaro to Real Madrid, Gianluca Zambrotta to Barcelona, Adrian Mutu to Fiorentina and Zlatan Ibrahimović to Inter. Trezeguet's compatriots Lilian Thuram and Patrick Vieira left for Barcelona and Inter respectively. Manager Fabio Capello defected to Real Madrid, and former Juventus legend and Trezeguet's former France teammate and captain, Didier Deschamps, was appointed the new manager. As one of the clubs star players, Trezeguet was heavily linked to a move away from Juventus, but he ultimately stayed with the Bianconeri to rescue them from the second division and help the shattered club return to Italy's top flight.

On 16 September 2006, before Juventus' Serie B match against Vicenza, he was awarded a commemorative plate in recognition of his 125 career goals. On 19 May 2007, Juventus achieved promotion to Serie A after a 5–1 win over Arezzo. Trezeguet scored the fifth goal which made the promotion mathematically possible. Despite the successful return to Serie A, there wasn't without controversy. After scoring a goal in Juventus' final match of the 2006–07 Serie B season against Spezia, Trezeguet made a gesture toward the club president, making a number 15 with his fingers – the number of goals he scored throughout the Serie B season – which was followed by a hand gesture which, in Italian, means "I'm out of here." However, Juventus announced on 25 June 2007, that Trezeguet had renewed his contract until 2011.

During the 2007–08 Serie A season, Trezeguet scored 20 league goals, and was second only to teammate and club captain Alessandro Del Piero for the Capocannoniere. Juventus finished third in the league to qualify for the UEFA Champions League after missing out on the tournament for two consecutive seasons.

In the 2008–09 season, he sustained a groin injury that kept him out for most of the season. Trezeguet finally made his return on 4 February 2009 against Napoli in the Coppa Italia and had a goal controversially disallowed. Nevertheless, he was one of the players who scored in the penalty shootout, which Juventus won 4–3. Trezeguet would shortly get his first goal of 2009 in a 2–0 win against Palermo in late February – a match where he received the captaincy for the first time in his professional career.

On 9 December 2009, Trezeguet scored his 168th goal for Juventus in a 4–1 defeat to Bayern Munich in the 2009–10 UEFA Champions League, making him the club's highest ever foreign goalscorer, surpassing Omar Sivori's total of 167 goals. As of the end of the 2009–10 season, David Trezeguet is currently fourth among Juventus' all-time top goalscorers with 171 goals.

In August 2010 Trezeguet was released from the remaining twelve months of his contract by Juventus.

Hércules CF

On 30 August 2010, Trezeguet completed his move to newly promoted La Liga team Hércules CF on a two-year deal.

International career

As a French-Argentinian, Trezeguet was eligible to play for France or Argentina.

Trezeguet first competed internationally in the French youth squad alongside Thierry Henry, Willy Sagnol, and William Gallas, and played in the 1997 FIFA World Youth Championship. In the lead up to the 1998 World Cup in France, Aimé Jacquet gave younger players such as David Trezeguet, Thierry Henry, and Patrick Vieira the chance to display their talent, and all three were eventually selected for the World Cup ahead of experienced French players including David Ginola. Trezeguet scored one goal in the tournament, in the 4–0 win over Saudi Arabia, as France went on to win the World Cup, defeating Brazil 3–0 in the final at the Stade de France. Two years later France were crowned European champions after defeating Italy 2–1 in the Euro 2000 final, courtesy of David Trezeguet's golden goal in extra time from a Robert Pirès assist.

Although ranked first in the world, France failed spectacularly in the 2002 World Cup, crashing out in the group stage without scoring a single goal, despite David Trezeguet, Thierry Henry and Djibril Cissé being the top goalscorers in the Serie A, Premier League and Ligue 1 that season. The failure was then followed up by a quarter-final exit at Euro 2004 at the hands of unheralded Greece with Trezeguet scoring just one goal in the tournament in a 2–2 draw against Croatia. However, with the return of Zinedine Zidane from brief international retirement, France would go on to reach the final of the 2006 World Cup. Throughout the tournament, Trezeguet found himself out of place in Raymond Domenech's 4-2-3-1 formation which only used one striker – a position allocated to Thierry Henry. On 9 July 2006, Trezeguet took part in the final, coming on as a substitute. The match, against Italy, went to a penalty shootout and Trezeguet was the only player from either team to miss his penalty, his shot hitting the crossbar, as Italy won 5–3 on penalty kicks after a 1–1 draw.

On 19 October 2007, Trezeguet threatened to quit France after being overlooked for two Euro 2008 qualifying matches by Raymond Domenech. On 26 March 2008, Trezeguet was selected for a friendly against England to replace the injured Karim Benzema, which would turn out to be his last appearance for France as he was subsequently not chosen for the squad that competed in Euro 2008.

On 9 July 2008, he announced his retirement from international football, finishing his France career ranked third among France's all-time top goalscorers with 34 goals from 71 caps. He cited "the awful Euro 2008 and the reappointment of the coach" being the main reasons for this decision, and also added "I see football differently from how they see it in France. Euro 2008 was very negative, but what annoys me more is that Domenech is staying."

Career statistics

As of 14 July 2010

Template:Football player statistics 1 Template:Football player statistics 2 |- |1993–94||rowspan="2"|Platense||rowspan="2"|Primera División||3||0||colspan="2"|-||colspan="2"|-||3||0 |- |1994–95||2||0||colspan="2"|-||colspan="2"|-||2||0 Template:Football player statistics 2 |- |1995–96||rowspan="5"|Monaco||rowspan="5"|Division 1||4||0||colspan="2"|-||colspan="2"|-||4||0 |- |1996–97||5||0||colspan="2"|-||colspan="2"|-||5||0 |- |1997–98||27||18||colspan="2"|-||9||4||36||22 |- |1998–99||27||12||colspan="2"|-||5||2||32||14 |- |1999–2000||30||22||colspan="2"|-||6||2||36||24 Template:Football player statistics 2 |- |2000–01||rowspan="11"|Juventus||rowspan="6"|Serie A||25||14||2||0||5||1||32||15 |- |2001–02||34||24||2||0||10||8||46||32 |- |2002–03||17||9||1||0||10||4||28||13 |- |2003–04||25||16||4||2||5||4||34||22 |- |2004–05||18||9||1||1||5||4||24||14 |- |2005–06||32||23||1||0||9||6||42||29 |- |2006–07||Serie B||31||15||1||0||colspan="2"|-||32||15 |- |2007–08||rowspan="4"|Serie A||36||20||3||0||colspan="2"|-||39||20 |- |2008–09||8||1||1||0||4||0||12||1 |- |2009–10||19||7||0||0||8||3||27||10 |- |2010–11||0||0||0||0||1||0||1||0 |- |2010–11^{1||Hércules||La Liga||0||0||0||0||0||0||0||0 |- Template:Football player statistics 35||0||colspan="2"|-||colspan="2"|-||5||0 Template:Football player statistics 493||52||colspan="2"|-||20||8||113||60 Template:Football player statistics 4245||138||16||3||57||30||318||171 Template:Football player statistics 40||0||0||0||0||0||0||0 Template:Football player statistics 5343||190||16||3||77||38||431||231 |}}

Note 1: Trezeguet joined Hércules after making one appearance for Juventus.

Honours

International

• France
  • FIFA World Cup:
    • Winner: 1998
    • Runner-up: 2006
  • UEFA European Football Championship:
    • Winner: 2000

Club

• AS Monaco
  • Ligue 1:
    • Winner: 1996–97, 1999–00

• Juventus
  • Serie A:
    • Winner: 2001–02, 2002–03, 2004–05*, 2005–06*
    • Runner-up: 2000–01, 2008–09
  • Serie B:
    • Winner: 2006–07
  • Coppa Italia:
    • Runner-up: 2001–02, 2003–04
  • Supercoppa Italiana:
    • Winner: 2002, 2003
    • Runner-up: 2005
  • UEFA Champions League:
    • Runner-up: 2002–03

Individual

• Serie A Footballer of the Year: 2002
• Serie A Foreign Footballer of the Year: 2002
• Serie A Top Goalscorer: 2001–02
• FIFA 100
• Chevalier (Knight) of the Légion d'honneur in 1998

External links

• David Trezeguet Photos and Statistics at sporting-heroes.net
• David Trezeguet Career Statistics on Juventus Official Website
• Trezeguet's career stats and timeline