He only played in seven matches for Atalanta, keeping up his record with Monaco (7) and Milan ( 8 ) ; he did manage six straight years with Inter, but before that it was a new club every year since he left Torino in the early 90s (a number of those moves were on loan).
When he was on and healthy, he was capable of putting up some very impressive numbers: 24 goals in 24 games for Atleti in 97/98, 22 in 25 for Inter 2001/02 and 24 in 23 for Inter in 2002/03. Unfortunately, it has been pretty much all down here from there, though there was that goal from 40 metres at the end of this season. A goal a game in Serie A is nothing to sneeze at.
What people don't like about Vieri is that he has in many ways become an absolute caricature of the modern footballer: always on the move in order to maxmise his earnings, always going out with a high profile bimbo, always eager to be featured (favourably) in gossip rags, always on the lookout for ways to make a buck (like the fashion labels). Even when he finally "settled down" at Inter (because everyone knows that Moratti is willing to pay strikers more than they can get anywhere else), he manages to annoy everyone with his off the field antics and to engineer a transfer that seemed primarily (or even exclusively) designed to piss people off.
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