The night Mark Viduka taught Alessandro Nesta a thing or two about football — Square Ball 5/12/24

Eddie Gray's favourite

Written by: Chris McMenamy

Dom Matteo scored an ‘effing great goal at the San Siro. Lee Bowyer made Dida look silly at Elland Road, but the real achievement of Leeds’ run to the Champions League semi-finals was beating Lazio at the Olimpico. While Milan were the big team of the 1990s in Italy, their decade of dominance ended with Lazio winning a rare league title in 1999/2000. In fact, they were league and cup Double winners when Leeds travelled to face them in Rome in the Champions League.

Leeds were the new kids on the block in the 2000/01 Champions League, a team brimming with young talent but lacking household names on the continent. Lazio were a star studded side, even by the standards of the halcyon days of Italian football. Their story was a familiar one in 90s calcio: an ambitious and charismatic president using the significant wealth they’d accumulated in the world of business (often a food conglomerate) to fund their dream, a winning football side. And it was almost always built on sand.

Lazio president Sergio Cragnotti ticked all the boxes. He became incredibly wealthy while involved in running an Italian-owned agri-food group in Brazil, and bought Lazio in 1992 with funds from the merchant bank that he founded shortly before. He continued to accrue more companies, such as food giants Cirio and Del Monte, while also putting Lazio’s name back on the footballing map with marquee signings like Paul Gascoigne.

He floated Lazio on the Italian stock exchange, the first football club to do so and hired Sven Goran-Eriksson in 1997 after convincing him to renege on a promise to take the Blackburn job. Like multiple Italian club presidents from the 1990s, however, he was eventually arrested for fraudulent bankruptcy once those sandy financial foundations were poked a bit, having seen his company Cirio default on over a billion euros’ worth of bonds. Maybe Peter Ridsdale wasn’t that bad, eh? Na, he was pretty bad either way. If Ridsdale had tomato money like Cragnotti, he’d have encased Elland Road in solid gold and signed Zinedine Zidane before it all went wrong.

Lazio had flirted with glory before appointing Sven and he took them to the next level, but not before selling their best player Beppe Signori, who the club had tried to offload two years previous but called it off after their fans rioted, throwing coins, tomatoes and smoke bombs at the club’s headquarters.

He already had Alessandro Nesta and Pavel Nedved (and Paul Okon), adding David Batty’s bezzie Roberto Mancini and Fabrizio Ravanelli, then Juan Sebastian Veron, Diego Simeone and more after they lifted the Cup Winners’ Cup in 1999. They pipped Juventus to the 2000 Serie A title on the final day, having lost only four times all season, and beat Inter to win Coppa Italia. This was a fearsome side that broke the world transfer record when signing Hernan Crespo a few months before they faced Leeds at Stadio Olimpico.

Still, this Leeds team were fearless. They had already been to Barcelona and Milan, and hosted Real Madrid in Europe. It wasn’t even the first time they had played at Stadio Olimpico that year, having drawn 0-0 with Roma in the UEFA Cup quarter-final in March thanks to Nigel Martyn’s 10/10 performance.

Leeds had lost 3-1 at Leicester before this game, having been three goals down after 28 minutes. Even Gerry Taggart scored. It wasn’t the best preparation for facing a top European side away from home. To make matters worse, Nigel Martyn was injured and therefore unable to repeat the heroics of his last visit. But not all was rosy in the Lazio camp, either. They might have been 6th in Serie A and enjoyed a comfortable 2-0 win over Reggina in their previous match, but Sven had already signed the contract to become England manager the following summer and had one foot out the door.

The game began with Alan Smith clattering both Alessandro Nesta and Fernando Couto in a sliding challenge. Foul, no yellow card. Mark Viduka was booked for throwing Nesta to the floor from a free-kick in the third minute, thus setting his stall out for the night. A smooth operator like Nesta couldn’t handle the big Australian. Neither could an enforcer like Diego Simeone. Viduka forced Lazio into making mistakes, giving up set-pieces from which Leeds created real chances, like Eirik Bakke’s header that was cleared off the line.

The Italian champions were under the cosh but showed their danger when Marcelo Salas had his own header cleared off the line by Jonathan Woodgate. Though Leeds dominated, the class in the Lazio side meant any mistake would be punished.

The real class remained that of Viduka. He created what could/should have been the opening goal on the stroke of half-time, sitting down two Lazio defenders with his close control before chipping a cross to Bowyer, who slid in at the back post but was denied.

Viduka’s size meant he was always considered a big lad, but he was so much more, as Dom Matteo explained in an interview with the BBC’s Adam Pope:

“[Viduka] actually had one of the best first touches [of any player] that I’ve ever played with. You talk about Viduka and people talk about his power and his ability to hold people off. Well let’s go back to his first touch, which was unbelievable.

“People like Eddie Gray always raved about the big man. I think he was his favourite to be honest. Eddie’s favourite was definitely big Mark. When you play with a player like Mark, who was very clever, knew what he was doing with the ball. [He] always found a way.”

Viduka continued to terrorise Lazio in the second half, to the point that Couto went down holding his face as if he’d been elbowed in an aerial duel, desperate to be relieved of this graceful beast he was forced into marking.

Woodgate defended like a gladiator and Olivier Dacourt directed from defensive midfield, but it was Viduka’s night. Watching this game back, he was a man ahead of his time. It was a complete centre forward’s performance, linking midfield and attack. He created chances, dragged defenders out of position and forced saves from ‘keeper Angelo Peruzzi, who won the competition with Juventus four years earlier.

Crespo forced Paul Robinson into making a fine save as the game edged towards a goalless conclusion, but then it happened. Viduka picked the ball up in the Lazio half and drew a defender, before laying it off for Smith who played it wide to Harry Kewell. He relayed the ball to Smith, whose first time pass to Viduka took out two defenders, right before a delicate, precise backheel from Viduka played in Smith to finish brilliantly. Thank you, and goodnight.

Leeds held on to win and set themselves up nicely to challenge for qualification to the Champions League quarter-finals. And the rest is history. Unfortunately.

“We went to sleep for a moment and Leeds punished us and I more than most was to blame,” Nesta said after the game. “Viduka is truly a great player.”

Couldn’t have said it better ourselves, Alessandro.