The journey is a short one, but Christian Vieri considers it a sign of how far he has come. Every morning he makes his way to the station in Prato, a pleasant little dormitory town to the northwest of Florence, and joins the commuters waiting to be shuttled to the city.

He used to get the odd look, but now they leave him to it, staring quietly out the window as Florence’s distinctive skyline begins to fill its frame. Forty minutes later he gets off at Campo di Marte, the assembly point for Fiorentina fans travelling to games away from home. Vieri, 34, is one of them now, in any number of significant ways. “I’ve always had a good life, but only now do I really understand what it actually means to live,” he says. “I had a real desire for normal things. My life now is like the ones other people my age lead. I work as hard as I can during the day, go home, have a meal and watch the TV. Sometimes I go out for pizza with my mates. We’ll roar about a bit on our scooters, make some noise. Normal things. Good things.”

Home is the family farm. He likes to spend time watching the bustle and fussing of the animals — dogs, doves, ducks, geese, hens. He is back living with his parents, the people he left behind in Sydney in 1988 to begin a grand tour of the Mediterranean game. He has lost about 11kg under Mamma’s watchful culinary eye, bringing back into focus those sharp shoulder blades and hard-wearing torso. Together, the pair oversee the farm’s olive oil production. Bottles of the stuff were left in the Artemio Franchi dressing room as Vieri’s Christmas present to his teammates.

A generous Vieri, a rustic Vieri, a content Vieri: who would have thought it? Not the Italian football press, long since resigned to resentful silence. Not many of his former teammates, who tell of a complicated character. Perhaps not even the player himself. Up to now, he has cultivated the rather paradoxical image of the brooding bon vivant, a man with a back catalogue of celebrity girlfriends as long as his list of previous employers, but who could be utterly bereft of charm or grace. The greatest native striker of the modern age (he recently went past 200 goals for Italian clubs), but admired as opposed to embraced. What has changed, and why has it changed him? “The injury,” he says. “Now I’m able to train every day without any issues, I’m just having fun.”

A weakness in his left knee saw it rupture in early 2006, requiring several bouts of surgery. Vieri had just moved to Monaco from Milan as he tried to win a place in Italy’s World Cup squad. He was out for 15 months, during which time came speculation he would be forced to retire. Going so close to the edge seems to have opened up Vieri’s eyes to the beauty of what was behind, around, and, potentially, in front of him. “Experiences like that make you think about what you have done and where you are going,” says the man who was for a time the world’s most expensive player after moving from Lazio to Inter for £31m in 1999. “I decided to work hard to make those who thought I was finished think again. I needed to just enjoy training and playing.”

To get here, to Florence and to happiness, Vieri has taken a circuitous route. Cesare Prandelli’s team are the 14th club he has played for, a list that takes in such glitterati as Juventus, Lazio, Torino, Atletico Madrid and both the Milanese monoliths. There is a 15th name, Sampdoria, the first club to take a punt on his patched up knee, but the Genovese ripped up this contract before he had even played a game. Vieri denies the club’s assertion that he was shorn of all motivation and desire. A few weeks down the line, he was signing a ¤1,500-a-month (£1,182) deal with Atalanta, knowing it would be six months at least before he was fit enough to target the ¤100,000 (£78,802) bonus the Bergamo club signed up to pay out each time he found the net.

Vieri and Fiorentina, who face Rangers in the first leg of the Uefa Cup semi-final at Ibrox on Thursday, ran into each other last summer. He was looking for an opportunity at a higher level. They were looking for a striker who could approximate the mix of presence and ability Luca Toni had just taken to Bayern Munich. The result was a one-year trial cohabitation.

Florence has taken him to its bosom, perhaps perceiving in him something of a kindred spirit. This is a club that likes lost causes, probably because they were one not even six years ago. In August 2002, Fiorentina were declared bankrupt and relegated to the Italian fourth division. Former owner Vittorio Cecchi Gori was put under house arrest in Rome after running up debts of £100m on the team. The league handed them a free promotion back to Serie B in 2003 for “sporting merit”, and they regained top-flight status the next year. Last season they finished sixth, qualifying for the Uefa Cup. “We try to attack straight away and score goals, put pressure on the opposition,” says Vieri. “Rangers are a good side, but we’re playing well, and I feel good.” You sense the next train on these tracks might have Rangers’ name on it.

TV match
Rangers v Fiorentina
Thursday, ITV4, 7pm, kick-off 7.45pm