never heard him speak before, until tonight on SSN they interviewed him arriving in glasgow for the uefa game with rangers, he has an aussie twangy voice with a slight italian hint in there, probably sounds a bit like tim cahill.
i always thought he was 100% italian but read on wikipedia he'd spent the early part of his life in australia.... anyway i'll bore off now!!
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seems one of those rare "human" footballers
Yes, he was brought to Sydney as a toddler and lived here until he was a teenager when his folks (having discovered his huge talent) decided that he would be better off in Italy where he had already attracted interest from some of the big boys.
His brother Massimo actually played for Australia and I think he is still knocking around the local leagues somewhere. Christian was offered the chance to play for Australia when he was in his early years as a pro in Italy but (not surprisingly) turned it down.
There are actually lots of young Aussie kids from ethnic backgrounds (Italian, Croatian, Greek, Serbian, Macedonian) who play junior football here and then go off to try and turn pro back in their country of origin. A few of the Croatian senior team are actually Aussie kids who decided to play for their country of origin rather than Australia, the left-back Josip Simic is definitely one of them.
Incidentally, Mark Viduka also came very close to playing for Croatia as a teenager and even played for the Aussie U-21's side as captain with red-and-white checkered captain's armband on - that did not go down too well. Viduka also has the Croatian national flag in a tiled mosaic on the bottom of his swimming pool.
Same here in Canada, there was a young lad grew up, just east of here in the football desert known as Calgary. His parents are English, his name is Owen Hargreaves.
as for his penalty miss .......
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saša_Ilić_(footballer_born_1972)