With the Champions League Final at Wembley looming, here's the first of a new Magic Spongers mini-series looking back at our favourite European games: Twisted Blood's Andi Thomas gets alarmingly hot and bothered about Gabriel Batistuta.
Manchester United 3-1 Fiorentina, 15 March 2000
I don't know a single football fan that doesn't have a special place in their heart for Fiorentina; there may be some (Juventus? Empoli?), but I don't know them. I suspect that this is, on some fundamental level, down to the sheer purpleness of their kit. Other purple sides are available, of course – Anderlecht, Germinal Beerschot, and a load of others I'd never heard of until I asked Twitter (Saprissa of Costa Rica, anybody?) – but nobody is as richly, as fundamentally, and as gloriously violet as the Tuscans. And, at the turn of the millennium, we got to watch that wonderful purple draped across the shoulders of a seriously tasty team.
