Batistuta a hero of fictional proportions

As a 17 year old they called him "El Gordo", the Fat One. By his own admission, most of his teammates were more skillful, faster and more powerful. Where they had muscles, he had flab.

Funny then that this lumbering oaf is now nicknamed "Batigol" or "Re Leone", the Lion King, and has become one of the most feared goalscorers in history.

Gabriel Batistuta is one of the few athletes to have a statue of himself sitting outside his home stadium. This puts him in the rarefied company of Rocky Balboa and Michael Jordan.

And, in case you forgot, Rocky is a fictional character, whereas Jordan might as well be (after all, he once led a bunch of cartoon characters to victory with a buzzer-beating dunk. Then again, Batistuta's personality is so vivid, his passion so intense, he too could be a storybook character.

You soon realize that you're not dealing with an assembly-line footballer, but with a guy who lives in his own world: a universe fueled by raw emotion and the enduring notion that anything is possible. In his autobiography, he writes about the first time he talked to Irina, the woman who would one day become his wife. He was sixteen and had gone to a party with another girl.

"The minute I laid eyes on Irina, my date disappeared, everything around us fell to dust. Like a moron I spent the entire evening staring at her. She danced with every boy for five minutes, but with me it was only two minutes. She left me drunk with emotion, but full of the knowledge that I had met the woman who would change my life."

People fall in love all the time, but few professional athletes are so explicit in recounting the moment they met their better half, fifteen years back.

Fewer still run up to television cameras after scoring goals, and, with bulging eyes and a foaming mouth, roar "I love you, Irina! I love you! I love you!" as Batistuta did two seasons ago.

To understand why Batistuta has spent nine seasons at Fiorentina, a solid club, but not exactly the cream of Italian soccer, you have got to understand that he is ruled by his heart more than his mind or his wallet.

Being a star and playing in Florence is a little like having a psychotic girlfriend. You may have the best sex in the world, you may get all the attention you crave, but you can also end up suffocated by emotion and, if she decides to put your bunny rabbit on the stove, don't be too surprised.

Fiorentina fans are as passionate as they come, but many times, if you're a professional footballer, they can make life difficult. The club has had its share of superstars over the past twenty years. From Socrates, Stefan Effenberg and Roberto Baggio in the 1980s to Batistuta, Rui Costa and Francesco Toldo today, talent was never the problem.

Every errant pass becomes a crisis, every missed goal, a day of mourning. And every loss turns into a massive conspiracy against the city. As paranoid persecution complexes go, Fiorentina fans are second to none.

Then again, the love Batistuta receives in his adopted hometown far outweighs any of that. Most of the men in Florence want to be him, most of the women in Florence want to bear his children.

He knows that if he had gone elsewhere he might have scored more goals.

Over the past five years he has averaged twenty goals a season. Nobody has come close. Oliver Bierhoff averaged just over 17, but one of those years was in Serie B. Beppe Signori is second best, with 15.2 goals a season.

But we can only wonder what he might have achieved at a Barcelona or a Manchester United or indeed an AC Milan.

You can be sure he knows all too well that, at another club, he would have brought home more silverware. As it stands, his trophy cabinet is rather bare: one Argentine title as a youngster, one Italian Cup and two Copa Americas. Nothing to write home about.

Yet he decided to forsake all that for Florence and Fiorentina.

Too often the media simply depicts athletes as money-grubbing hired guns, streetwalkers in cleats rather than stilettos, ready to provide five minutes of love in exchange for a bundle of cash.

Not Batistuta.

And bear in mind, this is not an Emilio Butragueno or a Franco Baresi, guys who grew up in the shadow of their hometown stadiums and remained steadfastly loyal to their cities and clubs.

Batistuta is a foreign player who grew loyal. His home is in Avallaneda, in Argentina, eating steak for breakfast, lunch and dinner and riding horses until his butt cheeks fall off.

But raw emotion is the currency in Batistuta's world, not trophies and bank accounts.

He says the thrill he gets leading Fiorentina on the pitch can never be matched. When you've got that thrill, coupled with a soulmate like Irina and a secure financial future (to be sure, Batistuta has earned millions which I suppose makes it easier to be loyal), why would you give it up?

Which is why it would be special to see him win one more trophy, whether it be the Serie A title (won't happen this year), the Champions League (a long shot, but, who knows?) or Korea-Japan 2002 (he'll be 33).

On its most basic level the game is about heroes.

And there are few more heroic than the former fat kid from Avallaneda.

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