Nicola Ventola

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Nicola Ventola
Personal information
Full name	Nicola Ventola
Date of birth	May 24, 1978 (1978-05-24) (age 30)
Place of birth	Grumo Appula, Italy
Height	1.85 m
Playing position	Striker
Club information
Current club	Torino F.C.
Number	9
Youth clubs
	Bari
Senior clubs1
Years	Club	App (Gls)*
1994-1998 1998-1999 1999-2000 2000-2001 2001-2003 2003-2004 2004-2005 2005-2007 2007-	Bari Inter Milan Bologna (loan) Atalanta (loan) Inter Milan Siena (loan) Crystal Palace (loan) Atalanta Torino F.C.	45 (2) 21 (6) 14 (0) 28 (10) 16 (4) 28 (4) 3 (1) 64 (21)
National team
?-2000	Italy U-21 / Olympic
1 Senior club appearances and goals counted for the domestic league only and correct as of June 2006. * Appearances (Goals)

Nicola Ventola (born May 24, 1978 in Grumo Appula, Bari) is an Italian footballer playing as a striker. He was a member of the Italian squad at the 2000 Summer Olympics in Sydney and represented Italy in the under-21s team.

Nicola Ventola's career began with Bari in 1994 as a youth player. Signing for Internazionale in 1998 he was showing real star potential, including scoring against eventual European Cup winners Manchester United. However, exactly a year later he was loaned out to Bologna (after Christian Vieri's £32 million transfer to Inter from Lazio) and later Atalanta.

Ventola returned to Inter in 2001 but, suffering from injuries, was not picked regularly for the first team, going on loan once again to Siena in 2003. Crystal Palace signed him on transfer deadline day in August 2004 on a season-long loan but this was wrecked by injury and he only made a handful of appearances. He did score against Southampton on the penultimate day of the season, which would have been enough to see Palace stay up had they not conceded in injury time.

In July 2005 Ventola signed a two year contract with Atalanta, scoring six goals in 29 games during the 2006-07 season.

In June 2007 he joined Torino F.C. on a two-year contract.^[1]

Ventola has a son, Kelian (b. 22 September 2003), with Brazilian model Kartika Luyet.

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