Roberto Boninsegna - footballer

Prolific striker who helped Italy reach 1970 World Cup final

Roberto Boninsegna in the colours of Inter Milan, 
the club he dreamed of playing for as a child

The footballer Roberto Boninsegna, a prolific striker who scored 171 goals  in 14 years in Italy’s Serie A, was born on this day in 1943 in Mantua in Lombardy.

Boninsegna, whose relentlessly tenacious attacking style made him a fan favourite despite his relatively small physical stature, was at his peak during a seven-season spell with Inter Milan from 1969 to 1976, during which he scored 113 goals in 197 Serie A appearances.

He was also a prominent member of the Italy national team at the 1970 World Cup finals in Mexico, scoring the opening goal for the azzurri in their epic 4-3 extra-time victory over West Germany in the semi-final. 

Boninsegna was also responsible for Italy’s first-half equaliser against Pele's Brazil in the final, before the South Americans, universally acclaimed as one of the finest teams in international football history, overwhelmed them in the second half, winning 4-1.

His aerial prowess, which saw him regularly outjump taller defenders to ensure his head was first to the ball, earned him the nickname Bonimba from the celebrated football writer Gianni Brera. It stuck with fans, even though the player himself did not care for it because it drew on an obsolete word used to describe circus dwarfs.

Boninsegna is said to have entered the world during adversity, his mother, Elsa, giving birth during an Allied bombing raid on Mantua during World War Two.

Always an Inter Milan fan - he wore the blue and black nerazzurri shirt under his club colours while playing youth football for his local team - Boninsegna suffered the heartbreak of rejection when he joined Inter’s youth programme only to be discarded at an early stage in his development.

The Tuscan club Prato eventually gave him his start in the professional game in 1963. His next move took many miles from home to Basilicata, spending a season with Potenza before returning north to join Varese, where he made his Serie A debut in 1965. 

Boninsegna's reputation soared after he
teamed up with Luigi Riva at Cagliari

His breakthrough came after he joined Cagliari in 1966. Forming a deadly partnership with the azzurri great, Luigi Riva, he scored 23 goals in 83 appearances for the Sardinian team, showcasing his knack for finding space and converting chances. Cagliari finished runners-up in Serie A in 1968-69.

Boninsegna missed out on Cagliari’s great triumph of the following campaign, when they lifted the scudetto for the only time in the club’s history, having achieved the dream previously dashed when Inter signed him in 1969 for a fee of 600 million lire, equivalent roughly to €13.7 million today and a colossal sum in terms of football transfers at the time.

With Inter, Boninsegna enjoyed considerable success, helping the nerazzurri win the scudetto in 1970-71, a season in which he was Serie A’s capocannoniere - top scorer - with 24 goals. In total, across his time at San Siro, he made 281 appearances (197 in Serie A , 55 in the Coppa Italia and 29 in Europe) and delivered 171 goals (113 in Serie A, 36 in the Coppa Italia and 22 in Europe).

Yet his spell with Inter also included controversy after his part in what would be dubbed La partita della lattina - the Match of the Can.  This was the first leg of the European Cup round-of-16 match between Inter Milan and Borussia Mönchengladbach in Germany.

In the 29th minute, with Inter trailing 2–1, Boninsegna was about to take a throw-in when he collapsed to the ground after appearing to be hit on the head by a Coca-Cola can thrown from the stands. 

Boninsegna was stretchered off. Inter officials demanded the match be abandoned but the Dutch referee, Jef Dorpmans, allowed play to continue. However, the Inter team effectively refused to compete, and Mönchengladbach went on to thrash them 7–1, a result that shocked European football.

Boningsegna helped Italy reach the
final of the 1970 World Cup in Mexico

When Inter lodged a formal protest with UEFA, arguing that the incident had unfairly disrupted the match and endangered player safety, a furious row developed, with some German fans and even club officials claiming that Boninsegna had exaggerated the extent to which he was hurt. 

There was also confusion over whether the can that hit Boninsegna was full, as the Italian team’s officials said, or empty, which some on the German side believed.  With no TV cameras capturing the incident on film, it was not possible to review what had happened.

Inter’s vice-president, lawyer Giuseppe Prisco, failed in his argument that the match should be awarded to Inter, UEFA deciding instead that it be replayed. However, in another controversial twist, the European governing body allowed the scheduled second leg in Milan to go ahead before the first leg was replayed. Inter won it 4-2. 

When the sides met again on neutral ground at the Olympic Stadium in Berlin, Inter simply had to protect their lead to progress to the quarter-finals and the contest ended goalless. Inter went on to reach the final but were beaten 2-0 by Ajax, for whom Johann Cruyff scored both goals.

Boninsegna’s Inter career ended with a transfer to Juventus in 1976 in a deal that saw Juventus striker Pietro Anastasi switch to San Siro. Inter judged that, at nearly 34, Boninsegna had his best years behind him, yet he went on to enjoy a renaissance in Turin, helping his new club win Serie A twice, a Coppa Italia and the UEFA Cup - the famous club’s first European trophy - before ending his professional career with Verona.

For the Italian national team, he won 22 caps between 1967 and 1974, scoring nine goals.

After retiring as a player in 1981, Boninsegna had a number of coaching roles, including at his home town club, Mantua, where he also served as technical director and vice-president. However, his post-playing career never reached the heights he touched as a player. 

Nonetheless, his legacy as a player remains intact. He is remembered not only for his goals but for his resilience, having risen from wartime hardship to become a symbol of Italian footballing excellence.

Boninsegna, now 82, still lives in Mantua. Even decades after his retirement, his name evokes memories of powerful strikes, dramatic goals, and unwavering determination.

Mantua's Palazzo Ducale, the seat of the city's
powerful Gonzaga family for almost 400 years

Travel tip:

Mantua, where Roberto Boninsegna was born and still lives, is an atmospheric and historic city in Lombardy, just over 130km (81 miles) southeast of Milan. In the Renaissance heart of the city is Piazza Mantegna, where the 15th century Basilica of Sant’Andrea houses the tomb of the artist, Andrea Mantegna, arguably the city’s most famous son, although the Roman poet Virgil was born in what is now Pietole, just a few kilometres outside the city. The basilica was originally built to accommodate the large number of pilgrims who came to Mantua to see a precious relic, an ampoule containing what were believed to be drops of Christ’s blood mixed with earth. This was claimed to have been collected at the site of his crucifixion by a Roman soldier.  Mantua was also the seat between 1328 and 1707 of the powerful Gonzaga family, who significantly expanded the city’s Palazzo Ducale, transforming it into their official residence and one of the largest palatial complexes in Europe.  The palace’s Camera degli Sposi is decorated with frescoes by Andrea Mantegna, depicting the life of Eleonora’s ancestor, Ludovico Gonzaga, and his family in the 15th century. The beautiful backgrounds of imaginary cities and ruins reflect Mantegna’s love of classical architecture.

Hotels in Mantua by Hotels.com

Milan's famous Stadio Giuseppe Meazza in the
San Siro district is earmarked for demolition

Travel tip:

During his Inter Milan career, Roberto Boninsegna became one of the many legendary players to have graced the colossal Stadio Giuseppe Meazza, in the San Siro district of northwest Milan. The stadium, which can accommodate almost 80,000 spectators, was completed in its original form in 1926. A number of extensive renovations, the last of which was completed ahead of the 1990 World Cup finals, gave the stadium its distinctive appearance, with its top tier supported by 11 cylindrical towers which incorporate spiral walkways. Giuseppe Meazza, from whom the stadium takes its name, spent 14 years as a player and three terms as manager at Inter.  Since 1947, Inter and their city rivals AC Milan have shared the stadium but its days are numbered in its present iconic form. The two Milan clubs have jointly purchased the stadium and surrounding land from the Municipality of Milan for €197 million, ending nearly 80 years of public ownership. The clubs plan to demolish most of the existing stadium to make way for a new, state-of-the-art arena with a capacity of 71,500 seats. It is planned that the new venue will be ready in time for the 2032 European Championships finals, which Italy will host jointly with Turkey. 

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More reading:

Giuseppe Meazza, the Inter striker who gave his name to the San Siro stadium

Luigi Riva, Italy's record goalscorer and hero of Cagliari

Sandro Mazzola, the Inter great whose father perished in the Superga disaster

Also on this day:

1868: The death of composer Gioachino Rossini

1894: The death of Sister Agostina Livia Pietrantoni, a nurse murdered by a patient later made a saint

1907: The birth of Princess Giovanna of Italy - Tsaritsa of Bulgaria

1914: The birth of film director Alberto Lattuada

1936: The birth of novelist and short story writer Dacia Maraini

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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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