The final few seasons of Luca Toni’s brilliant career have turned out to be an eventful and unexpected curtain call with Hellas Verona.
The now 38-year-old Luca Toni notched up 20 goals in his first season with the Gialloblu and completed the final fixture of the 2014-15 Serie A with one more strike against Juventus to take his tally to 22 goals for the season.
The game against Juventus didn’t turn out to be the expected shootout between Carlos Tevez — who missed a penalty — and Toni, as both fought to end the season as Capocannoniere (Serie A top-scorer) ahead of each other.
In the end, Toni had to share the award with Inter’s Mauro Icardi after the Argentine scored twice against Empoli on the final day to become the second-youngest ever winner of the award.
At Verona, Toni has become a legend and benefited from being the main man. Even at Bayern Munich, where he scored 38 goals in 60 appearances, he was more of a cult hero than a superhero.
This was the fourth occasion in which Toni has ended a league campaign as top scorer. In 2008 he was the Bundesliga’s top scorer with Bayern Munich, in 2006 he was Serie A’s Capocannoniere with Fiorentina and in 2004 he did it in Serie B with Palermo.
Toni is now Serie A’s oldest ever top-scorer, taking the record away from Dario Hubner who had netted 24 times for Piacenza in the 2001-02 season.
Piacenza’s Dario Hubner was joint top-scorer (24) with Juventus’ David Trezeguet in the 2001-02 season
It’s not hard to pinpoint the secret of Toni’s success.
He has scored goals everywhere he has played during his long career, representing 15 teams and scoring 150 Serie A goals and over 300 in total. Many expected that his career on the big stage would be over when he joined Dubai side Al Nasr in 2012, before his return to Fiorentina in August of the same year after a family tragedy. But the move subsequently proved to be a stepping stone to further success.
Toni obviously benefits greatly from Verona’s reliance on him and despite his incredible goal-scoring record, he has not been the glamorous forward that most big clubs truly appreciate. Andrea Mandorlini’s rather reactive 4-3-3 formation leaves Toni up front alone with a great degree of responsibility that he thrives on and with no obligation to track back.
Few teams are based around one player to the extent that Verona’s fortunes have been intrinsically linked with the veteran striker’s ability to hit the net.
Toni has no real competition for the role of target striker for the Scaligeri. Nico Lopez and Javier Saviola are both good players but neither has the physicality to usurp Toni and take on his job of bullying defenders. However, should Verona need a goal as they chase a game both can come on to support Toni. Their pace stretches defences and gives him more space when Hellas play two up front.
One of Toni’s strengths derives from the fact that he hasn’t had to modify his playing style as he has gotten older. His large frame encourages coaches to ask him to batter a way through centre-backs and the fact that he’s never been known for his pace means that he has not had to adapt his game to his waning athleticism.
However, Toni’s aerial ability does not mean that he is a one-dimensional player.
He is more than capable of holding the ball up and he has only scored two goals during the 2014-15 season with his head. Compare that with the nine he has scored with his right foot and the 10 with his left, it shows his versatility and show of experience in shielding the ball, buying fouls off defenders and being at the right place at the right time.
Toni is not without skill.
His turn on the edge of the area at home to Napoli displayed great technique that left the defence cold before he showed great determination to finish. His strike at Udinese displayed his ability to work the ball in a tight space to roll any defender hanging onto him before he placed the ball into the corner. And his powerful, acrobatic volley at home to Cesena was one of the goals of the season.
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Toni knows his strengths and sticks to them, and those strengths are fortunately not of the variety that decline with age.
Although Verona took a slight gamble in signing him on a free, they made the most of his specific attributes by building the team around him.
That gamble has paid off and the club and player have worked brilliantly together to make Toni Serie A’s oldest ever Capocannoniere. The last two seasons would make the fitting end to any career but the big question is: will he be at the Stadio Bentegodi next season to repeat the exploits that have made him such a hero to the Verona fans?
