Christian Riganò

Christian Riganò (born 25 May 1974 in Lipari, Province of Messina) is an Italian football manager and player who plays as a striker.

A former bricklayer, Riganò started his career with amateur team Lipari, where he gained a reputation of a prolific striker. In 1997 he moved to then Serie D team Messina, but he failed to impress there. This was followed by two season with Igea Virtus, another Serie D team, and 28 goals with the Sicilian side. In 2000, at the age of 26, he finally entered into professional football with Taranto, being instrumental in the rossoblu's promotion in their first season, and an impressive Serie C1 campaign the following year, being crowned Serie C1's topscorer with 27 goals in the 2001–02 season, and narrowly missing out on promotion to Serie B. In 2002, he joined Florentia Viola of Serie C2, and scored a personal record of 30 goals in 32 matches, earning the title of top-scorer in the league once again and helping Fiorentina to obtain promotion. During the 2003–04 season, he scored 23 Serie B goals in 44 matches, helping Fiorentina to win promotion to Serie A and earning his Serie A debut at the age of 30 the following season. During the 2005–06 winter transfer window, he was loaned to Empoli with little success.

In August 2006 he was transferred to Messina, making a very impressive season, scoring 19 goals in 26 appearances, finishing third on the top scorer chart in Serie A during the 2006–07 season. To make it even more impressive, he sustained an injury in January which saw him miss action for three months.

In August 2007 he signed for Levante UD but scored only four goals in 13 matches during his six-month stay with the Spanish side (three of which came in a hat-trick against Almería, making him the second Italian player after Christian Vieri to score a hat-trick in La Liga), being then loaned out to Siena during the January transfer window. He was then released for free by Levante after the Valencian club went relegated to Segunda División, and joined Lega Pro Prima Divisione club Ternana on 31 August 2008. His time at Ternana however proved to be disappointing, as Riganò played only a handful of matches, being then excluded from the first team on November. On 2 February 2009 Riganò accepted a permanent move to Cremonese, another Lega Pro Prima Divisione club, where he re-joined Emiliano Mondonico, his former head coach at Fiorentina. He successively left Cremonese at the end of the season, and signed with Italian club San Frediano Rondinella S.S., the second team of Florence.

A large and tall striker who excels in the air, Riganò is neither fast nor particularly powerful, but is known for his opportunism, anticipation, heading accuracy and eye for goal, despite his poor work-rate and struggles with fitness and weight-gain in his later career; due to his prolific goalscoring and place of birth, he has earned the nicknames il bomber di Lipari and Riga-Gol. A former defender, he is a well-rounded forward, who possesses excellent movement, timing, and positional sense, which makes him a difficult player to mark. Usually delpoyed as a centre-forward, he is also capable of using his physical strength and technical skills to hold up the ball for his team-mates when playing with his back to goal, and of providing them with assists in addition to scoring goals himself, and is an accurate penalty taker.

Club

Taranto

• Serie C2: 2000–01

Florentia Viola

• Serie C2: 2002–03

Individual

• Serie C1 Top-scorer: 2001–02 (27 goals)
• Serie C2 Top-scorer 2002–03 (30 goals)
• Fiorentina Hall of Fame

• Gianfranco Collaro (20 November 2013). "Chi l'ha visto…in campo! La storia di Riganò, l'intramontabile bomber siciliano" (in Italian). SportCampania.it. Retrieved 31 August 2016. 
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• Rolando Del Mela (11 December 2003). "Quel Riganò segna sempre..." (in Italian). La Repubblica. Retrieved 31 August 2016. 
• "IV Hall of Fame Viola: Toldo, Chiarugi e non solo entrano nella galleria degli onori" (in Italian). violanews.com. 8 December 2015. Retrieved 30 August 2016.