Baywatch the movie is coming out next summer. Perhaps this is why Luca Toni is retiring. "Who is that guy?" Lodigiani director of sport Rinaldo Sagramola famously asked of a young Toni in 1998-99 when the original was still a hit TV show. "Is that a lifeguard?"
Standing before Sagramola was this tall, handsome, sun-kissed teenager in flip-flops. Born to play football or, in another life, to run up and down Malibu beach in red shorts to the sound of Jimi Jamison's "I'll be Ready." Frankly it's hard to accept Toni hanging up his pair of Lottos unless it's to swap them for one of those red floats and a star turn beside The Hoff.
He may be turning 39 at the end of the month, with a 22 year career behind him, and it may be time for a change; a new chapter. But he led us to believe it would never happen. What was it he once said about calling it a day? "Well I can't possibly get any slower, so I might as well play on forever."
Though his relationship with Hellas coach Gigi Delneri has deteriorated, there is still hope. Toni has done this before. The first time he admitted to "thinking about packing it in" was almost two decades ago, at Fiorenzuola, before his career had even really begun to take off.
A manager was to blame then too. "[Alberto] Cavasin insulted me day after day," he told La Gazzetta dello Sport. The difference between then and now isn't insignificant. Toni was 20 at the time. He met the love of his life Marta and she talked him out of it. Marta would intervene again in 2012 when Toni was playing out his swansong in Dubai at Al-Nasr.
"The only time I've ever been scared in all my life was when we went to play in Iran in the Asian Champions League," he said. "Everywhere you looked there were machine guns."
Marta was expecting their first child when personal tragedy struck. She miscarried. Toni dropped everything to be by her side. It was an "awful blow." One they got through together. "I thought about retiring," Toni acknowledged to Bild. Once more Marta persuaded him otherwise. "She was stronger than me." The deciding factor was "she couldn't stand me being around the house."
We should also thank Dimitar Berbatov for Toni playing on for another four years. If the Bulgarian hadn't messed Fiorentina around on transfer deadline day in 2012, flying to Munich only to have his head turned by Juventus then Fulham, maybe Toni wouldn't have found his way back. It was destiny that he was at the ATA hotel in Milan when his old employers found themselves in desperate need of a striker.
After a year, however, Fiorentina wanted him behind a desk. A role as club ambassador was on the table, but Toni was not ready for it and he joined Verona. He had a new lease of life; Marta had given birth to a baby girl, Bianca, and his first goals for were dedicated to the pair of them. They came on his debut at the Bentegodi as Verona shocked Max Allegri's Milan.
No one saw his second youth coming. Toni scored 42 league goals in two years in blue and yellow and last season, at 38, he became the oldest Capocannoniere (Serie A top scorer) ever. Until Toni, no Italian had ever topped the scoring charts with two different clubs before. At a time when many felt he was way past his best, Toni became Hellas' all-time top scorer in Serie A and in no time at all.
It was remarkable, but this season has not gone how he or anyone at the club would have wanted. Verona are rock bottom with 25 points from 26 games, but they are not going down because of Toni. A badly assembled team, questionable transfers, dithering on whether to pull the trigger on coach Andrea Mandorlini, all played their part.
You could say time has caught up with Toni. Contrary to what he said in the past you can't go on forever and it would be foolish to expect him to continue to do the unexpected. Maybe he should have gone out on a high a year ago. But you can sympathise with why he chose to carry on.
"It's impossible to stop when you become Capocannoniere at 38 and show yourself to be the league's best striker," he said in a press conference on Wednesday. "The only way was to have a big disappointment like this year."
La Gazzetta dello Sport hailed Toni as the "the last great Italian centre-forward." He was a late bloomer. Even at Brescia when Roberto Baggio was his strike partner and Pep Guardiola used to stay back after training to put crosses in for him, the Toni we now know had yet to emerge. It wasn't until he went down to Palermo in Serie B and scored 30 goals in 2003-04 that he came up with his trademark celebration and people really began to stand up and take notice.
Toni pummelled defenders with his size and power. Another 20 goals followed in the top flight before he moved to Fiorentina and definitively made his name. The 2005-06 season was the most prolific anyone had enjoyed in Serie A in 47 years: He became the first player to break the 30 goals barrier in Italy since Antonio Angelillo in 1959 and the first Italian ever to win the European Golden Boot.
In the same year, Toni lifted the World Cup. After that, Bayern beckoned. He finished his first season in Bavaria with 24 goals and the Torjagerkanone (top scorer) award for the mantlepiece back home in Modena and stayed for three seasons. But the writing was on the wall for him when Bayern signed Mario Gomez and he felt pushed out by Louis van Gaal.
Spells at Roma and Genoa followed, before he finally got to play for Juventus and it's against the team he supported as a boy that he will bid farewell to the Bentegodi at the weekend.
His record at Verona, even after this season, is 50 goals in 99 games in all competitions. In total, Toni has netted 323 in his professional career and the next fortnight promises to be the end of an era. Udinese legend Antonio Di Natale is also retiring; only Roma captain Francesco Totti is holding out. "When we stop, almost a 1000 goals will go with us," Toni said. "It will be a big loss for Italian football."
Toni claims not to have thought about his future, although he is sure about one thing: he won't be going into coaching. "I look at my friend Pippo Inzaghi and it's like he's aged 10 years since getting the Milan job," Toni told the pink a year ago.
He'll figure it out. If not, there's a beach tower and pair of binoculars waiting for him. "Is that a lifeguard?" No, as Gazzetta put it, that's "the last great Italian striker."