Gabriel Omar Batistuta (Spanish pronunciation: [ga'brjel o'mar batis'tuta]; born 1 February 1969), nicknamed Batigol [bati'gol] as well as El Angel Gabriel [el ,aNGxel ga'brjel] (Spanish for Angel Gabriel), is a retired Argentine professional footballer. After beginning his career in Argentina in 1988, where he won titles playing for Newell's Old Boys, River Plate, and subsequently Boca Juniors, the prolific striker played most of his club football with Fiorentina in Italy; he is the twelfth-highest scorer of all-time in the Italian Serie A, with 184 goals in 318 matches. When his club Fiorentina was relegated to Serie B in 1993, Batistuta stayed with the club and helped it return to the top-flight league a year later.

In 1991, Batistuta was selected to play for Argentina in the Copa America held in Chile, where he finished the tournament as top scorer with six goals as Argentina romped to victory. The following year, he won the FIFA Confederations Cup with Argentina, finishing as the tournament's top-scorer. In 1993, Batistuta played in his second Copa America, this time held in Ecuador, which Argentina won with Batistuta scoring both goals in a 2-1 win over Mexico in the final.  The 1994 World Cup, held in the United States, was a disappointment. After a promising start Argentina were beaten by Romania in the last 16. The morale of the team was seriously affected by Diego Maradona's doping suspension. Despite the disappointing Argentine exit, Batistuta scored four goals in as many games, including a hat-trick in their opening game against Greece.  During the qualification matches for the 1998 World Cup (with former River Plate manager Daniel Passarella) Batistuta was left out of the majority of the games after falling out with the coach over team rules. The two eventually put the dispute aside and Batistuta was recalled for the tournament. In the game against Jamaica, he recorded the second hat-trick of his World Cup career, becoming the fourth player to achieve this (the others were Sandor Kocsis, Just Fontaine, and Gerd Muller) and the first to score a hat-trick in two World Cups. Argentina were knocked out of the World Cup by the Netherlands courtesy of a last minute Dennis Bergkamp winner after the two sides had held out for a 1-1 draw for almost the entire match.  After a good series of performances by Argentina in the qualification matches for the 2002 World Cup, hopes were high that the South Americans - now managed by Marcelo Bielsa - could win the trophy, and Batistuta announced that he planned to quit the national team at the end of the tournament, which Argentina aimed to win. But Argentina's "group of death" saw the team fall at the first hurdle, only managing a victory against Nigeria (Batistuta scored the match's only goal). They later fell to England 1-0 and managed a mere 1-1 tie against Sweden. This meant that the team was knocked out in the opening round for the first time since 1962.

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