Comunardo Niccolai - footballer

‘King of own goals’ was also a champion

Comunardo Nicolai was a member of the
most successful team in Cagliari's history

The footballer Comunardo Niccolai, a central defender with a propensity for scoring calamitous own goals, was born on this day in 1946 in Uzzano, a beautiful hill town in Tuscany.

Niccolai scored six own goals in his Serie A career, which contributed to his standing as something of a cult figure in Italian football.

He was actually an exceptionally talented player - good enough to be picked for the Italian squad for the World Cup in 1970, where the azzurri finished runners-up, as well as a key figure in the Cagliari team that won the Serie A title in 1970.

But he seemed unable to avoid moments of freakish bad luck and he acquired such unwanted notoriety as a result that people outside the game still reference his name when describing someone doing something to their own disadvantage.

For example, during the course of one of the regular political crises in Italy in the late 1990s, the right-wing politician Francesco Storace said of a policy decision taken by prime minister Massimo D’Alema, “Ha fatto un autogol alla Niccolai” - meaning that he had “scored an own goal Niccolai-style”.

Niccolai's most famous own goal - against Juventus
during the 1969-70 title-winning season

Niccolai acquired his unusual first name an account of his father’s politics.  A fervent anti-Fascist, Lorenzo Niccolai, himself a footballer who kept goal for Livorno between 1923 and 1928, named his son in honour of the Paris Commune, the revolutionary group that briefly held power in France in 1871.

Comunardo played his first football with the youth team at Montecatini before he was transferred to Torres, a club from Sassari in Sardinia.  From there he signed for Cagliari in 1964, joining a team that had just been promoted to Serie A.

Cagliari, who have never before or since been such a force in Italian football, steadily built a squad that was capable of challenging for the Serie A title, which they claimed in 1969-70 with a defence, including Niccolai, that conceded only 11 goals throughout the campaign.

Their stars were goalkeeper Enrico Albertosi, defender Pierluigi Cera, and forwards such as Roberto Boninsegna, Sergio Gori, Angelo Domenghini and the great Luigi Riva, all of whom went to Mexico with Niccolai in 1970 as part of the national team.

Cagliari's 1969-70 team - Comunardo Niccolai is on the
back row, fourth from the left

The title was an unprecedented achievement for the rossoblu - minnows compared with the giants of Juventus and Milan - although even then Niccolai managed to make his mark in the wrong way.

In a game against title rivals Juventus in March 1970, played on a treacherously wet surface, Niccolai jumped to meet a cross that goalkeeper Albertosi was trying to claim with the score at 0-0 and headed it into his own net.  Happily Cagliari managed to come out with a draw after Riva scored a late equaliser.

He became known as the 'King of the Own Goal', although one of Niccolai’s most celebrated misfortunes did not actually result in an own goal.

It came for Cagliari against Catanzaro away from home in the 1972 season. It was the last minute, and with Cagliari leading 2-1 the home team were doing everything to try to equalise, including a number of attempts to win a penalty.

Comunardo Niccolai now works as a scout for the
Italian national football federation

When Catanzaro’s winger, Alberto Spelta, went down inside the penalty area and Niccolai heard a whistle he believed they had achieved their objective and angrily swung a boot at the ball, sending it towards his own goal.

In fact, the whistle he heard was not that of the referee, but a spectator in the crowd.  The ball was not dead and though Niccolai's fellow defender Mario Brugnera managed to stop it crossing the line and prevent an own goal - he did so only by using his hand.  As a result, the home side were awarded a penalty after all - from which they scored.

Niccolai went on to play for Perugia and Prato before hanging up his boots in 1978.  He has since coached Savoia and the Italy Women national team and currently works as a scout for the men’s national team.

Uzzano perches on a hillside in Tuscany, about 45km (28
miles) to the west of Florence in the province of Pistoia

Travel tip:

Niccolai’s home town of Uzzano, in the province of Pistoia about 45km (28 miles) west of Florence, is part of the Valdinievole,a collection of small settlements that dot the plains and hills. The composer Giacomo Puccini spent a few months there, during which he composed the second and third acts of La bohème while resident at Villa Orsi Bertolini, known today as Villa Anzilotti.  Other attractions in the town include the church of Santi Jacopo e Martin (12th-13th century), which houses a Romanesque holy water font and a Renaissance statue attributed to Giovanni della Robbia. Uzzano’s historic centre clings to a hillside, offering commanding views, while special lighting at night ensures the village is visible from the valley below.

The port of Cagliari rises from the sea to provide a
colourful sight for approaching travellers

Travel tip:

Cagliari is the capital of the island of Sardinia, an industrial centre and one of the largest ports in the Mediterranean. Yet it is also a city of considerable beauty and history, most poetically described by the novelist DH Lawrence when he visited in the 1920s. As he approached from the sea, he set his eyes on the confusion of domes, palaces and ornamental facades which, he noted, seemed to be piled on top of one another. He compared it to Jerusalem, describing it as 'strange and rather wonderful, not a bit like Italy.’  What he saw was Cagliari’s charming historic centre, known as Castello, inside which the city’s university, cathedral and several museums and palaces - plus many bars and restaurants - are squeezed into a network of narrow alleys.


More reading: 

How Luigi Riva became a legendary figure for Cagliari and Italy

Gianfranco Zola, Sardinia's most famous footballing export

Gianni Rivera, star of Italy's 1970 World Cup team

Also on this day:

1966: The film The Good, the Bad and the Ugly goes on general release

1970: The birth of champion jockey Frankie Dettori

1973: Kidnappers release captive heir to Getty fortune


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Giuseppe 'Peppino' Prisco - lawyer and football administrator

Vice-president who became Inter Milan icon

Giuseppe Prisco, a legend at Inter, proudly
wears the feathered hat from his Alpini uniform

The lawyer and football administrator Giuseppe Prisco, who served as a senior figure in the running of the Internazionale football club in Milan for more than half a century, was born on this day in 1921.

Universally known as Peppino, he managed to combine a career in legal practice with a passion for Inter that he would share so publicly he became a symbol of the club whose name was chanted on the terraces.

Born in Milan into a family with its roots in Torre Annunziata, near Naples, he was said to have fallen in love with the nerazzurri at seven years old in 1929, when he witnessed his first derby against AC Milan at Inter’s old stadium, the Campo Virgilio Fossati, between Via Goldoni and Piazza Novelli to the east of the city centre.

His career as a lawyer did not begin until after he had served with the Alpini - the mountain troops of the Italian Army - on the Russian front in the Second World War. He was only 18 when he joined up but reached the rank of lieutenant in the “L’Aquila” battalion of the 9th Alpine Regiment, and as one of only three officers from 53 to return alive from the Russian front was awarded a Silver Medal for Military Valour by the Italian government.

On returning to civilian life, he graduated in law at the University of Milan and became a registered practising lawyer in 1946, opening his own office in the city, the start of a business that would bring him success and kudos for decades.

Prisco was for many years the president of the
Milanese Bar Association

He was president of the Milanese Bar Association for many years and participated in numerous high profile trials, including that of the controversial Milan banker Roberto Calvi on embezzlement charges in 1981.  Calvi was released on bail pending an appeal and a year later was found in dead in London.

Prisco joined his beloved Inter in 1949 as club secretary and thereafter served as a legal advisor to the board of directors before being elected vice-president in 1963, a position he held until his death in 2001, two days after his 80th birthday.

During his time as a director of the club, Inter won six Serie A titles, two European Cups, two Intercontinental Cups, three UEFA Cups, two Coppa Italia titles and one Italian Super Cup.

Fans took him to their hearts after he used his legal expertise to force UEFA to overturn a defeat against Borussia Moenchengladbach in the UEFA Cup in 1971 after the Inter forward Roberto Boninsegna had to be taken off after being struck by a can thrown from the crowd.  Inter won the rematch.

He also endeared himself to the nerazzurri faithful with the sharp one-liners he would frequently deliver during television interviews when he was given the opportunity to talk about the club’s great rivals.

Prisco was presented with a special Inter
shirt to mark his 50 years with the club

Famously, he once said: "If I shake hands with a Milanese, I wash my hands, if I shake hands with a Juventus (fan), I count my fingers.”

On another occasion, he declared: “I’m against every form of racism but I’d never allow my daughter to marry a Milan player.”

At the end of the 1990s, he became a regular guest on TV sports shows such as Controcampo, in which he would often have humourous spats with presenters Diego Abatantuono and Giampiero Mughini.

Married to Maria Irene, he had two children: Luigi Maria, who followed him into the legal profession, and Anna Maria.  After his death from a heart attack, he was buried at Arcisate, a town in the province of Varese, about 70km (43 miles) north of Milan.

One of the neoclassical arches that form the entrances
to Napoleon's Arena Civica in Milan

Travel tip:

Inter have shared the Stadio Giuseppe Meazza in San Siro with rivals AC Milan since 1947, but before that played at a number of stadiums around the city, including the Campo di Ripa Ticinese in the Ticinese district souith of the centre, the Campo Virgilio Fossati and the Arena Civica, the grandiose neoclassical stadium commissioned by Napoleon Bonaparte after he had proclaimed himself King of Italy in 1905. Inter played their home games at the Arena, a kind of mini-Colosseum in the Parco Sempione, behind the Sforza Castle, from 1930 until 1958.


Travel tip:

A view over the rooftops at Torre Annunziata, looking
towards the waters of Bay of Naples

Torre Annunziata, where Prisco had family roots, is a city in the metropolitan area of Naples. Close to Mount Vesuvius, the original city was destroyed in the eruption of 79 AD and a new one built over the ruins. Its name derives from a watch tower - torre - built to warn people of imminent Saracen raids and a chapel consecrated to the Annunziata (Virgin Mary). It became a centre for pasta production in the early 19th century. The Villa Poppaea, also known as Villa Oplontis, believed to be owned by Nero, was discovered about 10 metres below ground level just outside the town and is now a UNESCO World Heritage Site.


More reading:

Massimo Moratti, the business tycoon who presided over Inter's golden age

How Giuseppe Meazza became Italian football's first superstar

Why mystery still surrounds the death of 'God's banker' Roberto Calvi

Also on this day:

1813: The birth of forgotten composer Errico Petrella

1907: The birth of postwar movie star Amedeo Nazzari

1936: The death of playwright Luigi Pirandello


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