🙌 Juventus cult heroes: Paolo Montero | OneFootball

Throughout the 1990s and 200s, Juventus had a well-earned reputation for having some of the hardest men in football.

No nonsense players who had no hesitation in showing off their tough side, by sly means if necessary, were a staple of some of their strongest sides.

And the king of monster mountain, who had clocked up the body count to earn that berth, was Paolo Montero.

He was the epitome of a man of steel and would undoubtedly have given Clark Kent a run for his money in a 50-50 battle.

In fact, we bet even Superman himself would have thought twice about entering into an aerial duel against the man who proved to be many a striker’s kryptonite.

After all, you don’t set the all-time Serie A record for most red cards without having quite the intimidation factor about you.

His 16 dismissals are more than any other player in the Italian top flight.

But the Uruguayan was so much more than a brutal wrecking ball at the heart of a tough Juventus defence for the best part of a decade from the mid ’90s to the mid noughties.

He could play too and possessed an intelligent reading of the game along, while in the air he had few peers and possessed a sweet left foot for a defender and was versatile into the bargain too – capable of playing at full-back if required.

His fearsome reputation was, of course, well earned and you only have to ask Luigi Di Biagio of Inter for proof – with Montero receiving a three-game ban for an unceremonious jab to the jaw during a Derby d’Italia draw in 2000.

But it also means that he has been overlooked to an extent and doesn’t receive the respect and credit he deserves (although that doesn’t apply among the club’s supporters).

Plenty who played either alongside him or had the panic-inducing pleasure of going up against him have made the claim that he was without any real weakness.

“In Serie A, there have been a few pitbulls who spend all game standing behind you kicking you,” said none other than the league’s second highest scorer of all time, Francesco Totti.

“For instance, Montero was someone who could come scything in on you when he lost the plot but he wasn’t always so bad during the game and was an extremely strong defender.”

Sometimes, his fiery nature even spilled over off the field too as he once allegedly set about a member of the paparazzi for taking too many photos of his old Juve team-mate Angelo Di Livio.

And what endeared the man known as ‘The Terminator’ in his native country to the fans in Turin was the fact that he was willing to deliver exactly what they craved: victory at all costs.

“Football is made for cunning people and when I step on to the field, my only desire is to win,” he told The Observer in 2003.

“I’m not thinking about being a role model for my sons or the people watching me. Sometimes you have to do anything to win and that’s my nature.

“I don’t criticise those who feign injury, tug a shirt, dive or do something else to win a game because that’s the purpose of football.”

And that is precisely what makes him so beloved to this day in Turin.

At Juventus, winning is and always will be a necessity.

In Montero, they had a man who delivered it and did so with a brutal beauty that has to be respected.