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Cristiano Lucarelli - without a doubt one of the biggest finds of this season in Italy's "Serie A" and, undoubtedly, the best purchase in team history.
The 29-year-old striker, who scored 24 goals this season, took the first place in the list of top scorers in the Italian "Serie A". He was only one accurate shot away from joining the ranks of the "Golden Shoe" alongside French and Uruguayan Diego Forlan.
Although many football specialists were surprised by this player who is about to cross the age of thirty, he is well acquainted with the elite Italian league. Many defenders and goalkeepers in this country have come across him. Excluding this season, this Italian striker has already shaken the nets of "Serie A" for 5 seasons before.
What is the career of this Italian striker? Cristiano started it in the 1992/93 season in the amateur league CND playing for the "Cuoiopelli" team, where he scored 5 goals in 28 matches. This is where C.Lucarelli's rise as a player began.
In the following years, the talented striker moved to a team that was playing in the C1 league. Although this season was very unsuccessful for the striker, as he was often plagued by various injuries (and C.Lucarelli only played 2 matches), the "Perugia" team made it to the second highest Italian league - "Serie B", where the striker spent one season with this team. Unfortunately, the second season in Perugia was unsuccessful - the striker rarely made it to the team's lineup and played only 5 matches, during which, as in the first season at Perugia, he did not score a single goal.
Prior to the 1995/96 season, the Italian "Serie B" team "Cosenza," in search of a way to strengthen their attack, took a big risk by acquiring C.Lucarelli, who did not shine in Perugia to say the least. However, "Cosenza" did not make a mistake. In the 1995/96 season, the striker scored 15 goals in 32 matches and emerged as a very promising and talented footballer.
After spending a year with "Padova" in the eleventh division, also playing in "Serie B" (he scored 14 goals in 34 matches here), C.Lucarelli made his way to "Serie A".
The first club of the striker in the "Serie A" championship was , which this year dropped out of this league. Although C.Lucarelli scored "only" 5 times in 26 matches, this did not prevent other clubs from noticing the new talent, and in the 1998/99 season, the striker began his career in Spain with the famous team.
Unfortunately, the Spanish league and Spanish football did not suit C.Lucarelli - he scored only 1 goal in 4 played matches. So in the following season, the striker continued his career again in his native Italy with , where he "buried" 27 goals in two seasons.
After his time in Lecco, the "Torino" team was next, playing in "Serie A" at the time. However, things did not go very well for the striker in Turin - he scored 10 goals during his two years there, but the player longed for home and asked to be loaned out to the "Livorno" team.
Then began the most successful period of C.Lucarelli's career, which continues to this day. Before the 2003/04 season, the "Serie B" team "Livorno," where the Lithuanian national team striker was already playing, acquired the striker and did not regret it - C.Lucarelli scored 29 goals in 41 matches and helped the team achieve the greatest success in the club's history - reaching "Serie A".
Now, keeping C.Lucarelli for the "Livorno" team will be really difficult, as many famous and wealthy clubs will try to buy such a striker. However, the player himself wants to stay in his hometown.
Although so far no one has mentioned such intentions, at the end of May there were reports that a Moscow team offered 5 million euros for C.Lucarelli to the Italian club, and a two-and-a-half-year contract with an annual salary of one and a half million euros for the striker. As claimed, the Italian club and the player rejected this offer.
