Fabrizio Ravanelli

By Craig · Published 31 October 2026

A few months after scoring in a Champions League final, Fabrizio Ravanelli was pulling his shirt over his head on Teesside. He stayed for one season. It brought 31 goals, two cup finals, a debut nobody has forgotten and a relegation nobody at Middlesbrough has forgiven.

Clubs

Perugia, Avellino, Casertana, Reggiana, Juventus, Middlesbrough, Marseille, Lazio, Derby County, Dundee, Perugia

Premier League

64 appearances, 25 goals

Honours

Champions League, UEFA Cup and Serie A with Juventus, Serie A with Lazio

International

22 caps and 8 goals for Italy

Fantasy price

£8.0m in 1996/97

How he arrived

In the 1996 Champions League final in Rome, Ravanelli put Juventus ahead against Ajax, and Juve went on to win it on penalties. That summer Bryan Robson's Middlesbrough paid around £7m for him, the third-highest fee an English club had paid at the time, and reportedly made him the best-paid player in the Premier League.

Boro were going all in. Juninho was already there, and Emerson arrived from Porto to play alongside his fellow Brazilian. Ravanelli was paraded at the Riverside before his first game, his prematurely white hair the reason for his nickname: the White Feather.

The moment: Liverpool, 17 August 1996

Opening day at the Riverside, and Liverpool kept taking the lead. Stig Inge Bjørnebye scored early, John Barnes restored the advantage and Robbie Fowlermade it 3-2. Each time, Ravanelli answered.

The first was a penalty after Juninho was brought down, his first goal in English football. The second was a sliding finish from Neil Cox's cross. The third came with nine minutes left, when he went past David James and finished with his left foot. 3-3, a hat-trick on debut, and the shirt over the head.

None of the three goals was spectacular. It didn't matter. It was the opening day, it was Liverpool, and Boro's record signing had delivered at once.

The moment: Leicester, Wembley, 6 April 1997

Boro reached both domestic cup finals that season, and Ravanelli scored in the first of them, the League Cup final against Leicester. Emile Heskey equalised and the game finished 1-1. Leicester won the replay at Hillsborough 1-0, and in May Chelsea beat Boro 2-0 in the FA Cup final.

Why the streets won't forget

Because for one season Middlesbrough had everything. Ravanelli scored 16 league goals and 31 in all competitions, a total no Boro player has come close to since. They had Juninho and Emerson, two Wembley finals and a shirt-over-the-head celebration that a generation of young Boro fans copied.

And they still went down. In December Boro called off a game at Blackburn at short notice, citing injuries and illness, and the FA docked them three points. They finished 19th on 39 points. With those three points back they would have stayed up by one.

Ravanelli didn't help his own legend. He complained about the training facilities compared with Turin, and after he left he said the club would never be big while it was run so amateurishly. He went to Marseille, then won Serie A with Lazio, and came back to England on a free in 2001. He scored nine times for Derby in 2001/02, Derby went down too, and the club deferred his wages for years.

None of that dims the debut. The White Feather arrived at the exact moment the Premier League started to feel glamorous, and for one wild year he made Middlesbrough one of the most watchable sides in the country.

Where is he now

Ravanelli finished his playing days back home at Perugia, then moved into coaching. He worked with Juventus's young players from 2011 to 2013, had a few months in charge of Ajaccio in France in 2013, and a short spell at Arsenal Kyiv in 2018. He has since become a familiar face on Italian television, working as a pundit for Sky Italia, Fox Sports and Mediaset.

Which seasons can you draft him in?

Want him in your retro fantasy football team? Pick him in 1996/97 for £8.0m and start the season with that debut hat-trick.