Massimo Taibi

37
Massimo Taibi bigraphy, stories - Italian footballer

Massimo Taibi : biography

18 February 1970 –

Massimo Taibi ( born 18 February 1970 in Palermo) is a retired Italian football goalkeeper, who played for several clubs, mostly in Italy’s Serie A, B, and C1.

Honours

Club

Piacenza Calcio

  • Serie B (1): 1994-95

Manchester United

  • Intercontinental Cup (1): 1999

Club career

Italy

Taibi started his career for Licata until 1989. He appeared only once, before moving to Trentino, where he was a first-choice goalkeeper, playing 23 matches. After one season, he moved to Milan in Serie A for the 1990–91 season. As in his first club, he was not used at all, and shortly moved to Como, where he played the following season. After that he moved to Piacenza. Taibi stayed there for five seasons, until the 1996–97 season, and appeared for most of the club’s games.

Piacenza thought his time was over, so they sold him to the club which had not played him, Milan. This time, Milan played him in half of the 1997–98 season’s games as a backup to teammate Sebastiano Rossi. Then Milan sold him to Venezia. In his first season with Venezia, he played in nearly every game.

Manchester United

In 1999, Manchester United purchased him for £4.5 million. He made his debut against Liverpool, where he flapped at a free kick, allowing Sami Hyypiä to score. However, he later made a number of saves, including a one-on-one save from Vladimír Šmicer. United went on to win 3–2 with Taibi getting the Man of the Match award. Taibi competed with the other two Manchester United goalkeepers, Mark Bosnich and Raimond van der Gouw, for the first-team place, but lost out after a gaffe against Southampton in September 1999 that resulted in Matthew Le Tissier scoring a goal, which he became synonymous for. This match led to Taibi being dubbed ‘The Blind Venetian’ by one newspaper. He only played four matches, one of them being a 5–0 defeat at Chelsea, United’s first league defeat since losing to Middlesbrough in December 1998.

Return to Italy

In January 2000, Taibi joined Reggina on loan until the end of the season, where he played regularly. After the loan spell ended, Manchester United made it clear that – although Taibi was available for transfer – another loan deal was out of the question, rejecting a bid from Napoli. In July 2000, Manchester United agreed to allow Taibi to rejoin Reggina for a fee of £2.5 million. On 1 April 2001, Taibi scored a goal with a header off a corner kick in the 87th minute against Udinese to equalise the score at 1–1. With the goal, Taibi joined Michelangelo Rampulla as the only goalkeepers to score from open play in Serie A history.

After his two-year spell at Reggina, he was shifted to Atalanta. In the summer of 2005, he went on loan to Torino, serving as first-choice goalkeeper; the move became permanent in 2006, with Taibi however becoming the backup goalkeeper behind Christian Abbiati. He made his seasonal debut on 13 January 2007. In 2007–08, he joined Ascoli, as Torino acquired the services of Matteo Sereni.Taibi played 47 matches, before he announced his retirement from football in 2009.