One March day four years ago, your correspondent interviewed a little known Juventus reserve striker. In a side in which Roberto Baggio, Pierluigi Casiraghi, Gianluca Vialli and German Andreas Moeller made the competition for places up front distinctly "hot", the 24-year-old with prematurely grey hair was finding life tough.
Scorer of 24 goals in the previous two seasons with second division Reggiana, the "boy" refused to concede that he would not make it with Juventus, saying among other things : "It's been a dream come true for me to join Juventus. At the moment, I've got to struggle to earn my place but I hope to stay here a long time, score a lot of goals and win a lot of trophies."
The speaker, of course, was Fabrizio Ravanelli and those were pre-Bosman thoughts uttered well before the recent revival in English footballing fortunes. Since then, Ravan elli's career has gone in for a Big Dipper ride as he went from the joys of a Serie A championship title and European Champions League wins with Juventus to the sporting and climatic (if not pecuniary) misery of life at Middlesborough last season.
Ravanelli's fortunes struck a distinctly low ebb late this summer when his seemingly exaggerated wage demands blocked possible moves to clubs such as Everton and Liverpool. Determined not to play a season in the lower English division, Ravanelli and his advisers dug their heels in and waited for Mr Moneybags to come walking over the horizon.
Just when all seemed lost, Mr Moneybags did arrive - in the person of Robert Louis-Dreyfus, boss of multinational sports wear firm Adidas and owner of Olympique Marseilles. Dreyfus has ambitions plans for a Marseilles club on its way back after the ignominy of the 1993 match-fixing scandal.
Dreyfus splashed out approximately $8.5 million for Ravanelli, offering the player a four-year contract worth an annual $1.6 million, after tax.
Ravanelli must reckon the wait was well worthwhile. Not only is he laughing all the way to the bank but he has had an immediate impact with Marseilles, scoring two and setting up two in his first five games. Following a 1-0 away win over Lens last weekend, Marseilles are currently fourth in the first division, just four points behind leaders Monaco.
Furthermore, no sooner had he played for Marseilles than he received a fax from Italian coach Maldini, telling him that he would be required for Italy's World Cup play-offs against Russia.
Hardly surprisingly, Ravanelli currently sounds well satisfied with his lot : "I'd willingly go to play in Spain and I'd be happy to return home to Italy but I think I've made the right choice.
In reference to his English season with Middlesborough, Ravanelli these days tends to be diplomatic, pointing out that "at first" things went very well. He acknowledges, too, that English soccer is economically light-years ahead of both France and Italy.
By comparison with Marseilles, however, he feels that Middlesborough were "amateurish" when it came to training methods and facilities. At Marseilles, players' diets are carefully controlled, blood samples are regularly taken while twice a week the side trains three times in the same day.
In the year that is in it, a reference to next summer's World Cup finals is obligatory. Ravanelli already has his ideas clear about the favourites: "I see two favourites, France and Brazil. After that, it'd be nice to think that Italy might do well . . . As for myself, I just hope to be in the Italian squad and if I am, I'll give all I've got and hope to win."
