Gianfranco Zola – footballer

Brilliant forward voted Chelsea’s all-time greatest player

Gianfranco Zola scored 58 goals for Chelsea
in the Premier League

Gianfranco Zola, a sublimely talented footballer whose peak years were spent with Napoli, Parma and Chelsea, was born on this day in 1966 in the Sardinian town of Oliena.

Capped 35 times by the Italian national team, Zola scored more than 200 goals in his club career, the majority of them playing at the highest level, including 90 in Italy’s top flight – Serie A – and 58 in the English Premier League.

He specialised in the spectacular, most of his goals resulting from his brilliant execution of free kicks or his dazzling ball control.

Zola went on to be a manager after his playing career ended, although he has so far been unable to come anywhere near matching his achievements as a player.

He was probably at his absolute peak during the seven years he spent playing in England with Chelsea, whose fans named him as the club’s greatest player of all time in a poll conducted in 2003, shortly before he left to return to Sardinia.

However, it was probably the four years he spent with Napoli, his first Serie A club, that were his making as a player, after being spotted playing club football in Sardinia for Nuorese and Torres.

Zola was signed in 1989 and although his appearances at first were limited, he developed a close bond with the club’s Argentinian icon, Diego Maradona, often spending hours alongside him after normal training had finished, trying to emulate his skills, especially in taking free kicks.

He would later comment that he “learned everything from Diego.”

Zola was hugely popular with Chelsea's fans

Although he was essentially still a fringe player at that stage, Zola scored two goals as Napoli won Serie A in 1989-90, giving him his only league winner’s medal.

When Maradona left under a cloud, having been banned from playing for drug offences, Zola took his mantle, largely on the maestro’s recommendation, to which manager Claudio Ranieri responded by giving Zola the No 10 shirt worn by Maradona.

Napoli were not the force they had been without Maradona, yet Zola scored 12 goals in the 1991-92 season and another 12 in the 1992-93 campaign, in which he also made 12 assists, giving him the accolade alongside Fiorentina’s Francesco Baiano of providing the most assists over the Serie A season.

He scored 32 goals in 105 appearances for Napoli, whom he left in 1993 only because the club, in a difficult financial situation, began to sell off their best players to pay debts.

Transferred to Parma for 13 billion lire, Zola established himself as one of the best creative players in Italy alongside Roberto Baggio and Alessandro del Piero.  He scored 18 goals in his first season and 19 in his second campaign as the gialloblù just missed out on the Serie A title in a hard-fought battle with Juventus.

Favoured by manager Nevio Scala, he was less popular with Scala’s successor, Carlo Ancelotti, who could not accommodate Zola’s talents in his 4-4-2 system, leaving the player too often a frustrated figure on the bench, despite his record of 49 goals in 102 appearances.

News that Zola was unsettled began to circulate and in November 1996, Chelsea’s then-manager, Ruud Gullit, pulled off what would come to be regarded as one of the biggest transfer coups in Premier League history, signing Zola for £4.5 million.

He lit up the Premier League, helping Chelsea win the FA Cup twice, the League Cup, the Charity Shield, the UEFA Cup-Winners’ Cup and the UEFA Super Cup.  He helped them qualify for the UEFA Champions League twice as they finished third in the Premier League in 1999 and fourth in 2003, with Zola their leading goalscorer on each occasion.

Zola, pictured on the touchline as West Ham
manager, has not found success as a coach

His goals were often either big-match winners, such as in the 1996-97 FA Cup semi-final against Wimbledon or the 1997-98 Cup-Winners’ Cup final winner, when he scored within seconds of coming off the subs’ bench, or else works of art, none more celebrated than the mid-air backheel he executed to score from a corner in an FA Cup tie against Norwich in 2001-02.

Zola scored 16 times in what would be his final season at Stamford Bridge, having decided he would finish his career back in Sardinia with the island’s top club, Cagliari.  A week after he gave his word to Cagliari that he would be their player in 2003-04, Roman Abramovich completed his takeover of Chelsea.

The Russian billionaire was desperate to keep Zola at Stamford Bridge but the Italian told him he would not renege on his promise.  Rumour has it that Abramovich even considered buying the entire Cagliari club in order to transfer Zola back to Chelsea.

In the event, Zola kept his promise, helping Cagliari gain promotion to Serie A in his first season, before retiring at the end of the 2004-05 season, scoring twice against Juventus in his final match.

Capped 35 times by Italy, scoring 10 goals and playing in the 1994 World Cup finals in the United States, Zola then moved into coaching, at first as assistant to his friend and former Chelsea teammate Pierluigi Casiraghi in the Italy Under-21 set-up, then in club football.

However, his management career has so far been dismal compared with his playing career.  He has managed West Ham, Watford and Birmingham City in England, Cagliari in Italy and Al-Arabi in Qatar, but has been either sacked or obliged to resign from all five posts because of poor results.

Married to Franca, Zola has three children. His son, Andrea, has played for West Ham reserves and for Essex non-League club Grays Athletic.

A church and market in Oliena

Travel tip:

Oliena, a mountainous town notable for its multi-coloured rooftops, sits in the shadow of Monte Corrasi, towards the north of the island of Sardina, about 100km (62 miles) south of Olbia and 200km (124 miles) north of Cagliari. Probably founded in Roman times, it is famous now for beautiful silk embroidery and its red wine, Nepente di Oliena.

The waterfront at Cagliari

Travel tip:

Cagliari is Sardinia’s capital, 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. 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 as he approached from the sea. He compared it to Jerusalem, describing it as 'strange and rather wonderful, not a bit like Italy.’

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The death of Giuseppe Garibaldi

Unification hero spent last days on his island off Sardinia

The revolutionary general Giuseppe Garibaldi

The Italian revolutionary and patriot Giuseppe Garibaldi died on this day in 1882 on the Sardinian island of Caprera.

The 74-year-old former military general and left-wing politician, whose Expedition of the Thousand was a major factor in completing the unification of Italy, had spent much of the last 27 years of his life on the island.

Increasingly confined to bed because of crippling arthritis, he was living on his farm with his third wife, Francesca Armosino, when he passed away.

Knowing he was fading, in the days before his death Garibaldi had asked for his bed to be moved close to a window, from which he could gaze at the emerald and sapphire sea.

He has asked for a simple funeral and cremation, and had even nominated the place on the island where he wished his body to be burned, in an open coffin, with his face to the sun.

He had hoped his ashes would be handed over to ordinary Italians, to be mixed with the earth in a place where a garden might grow as a symbol of the new Italy.

Garibaldi with his third wife, Francesca

But his wishes were ignored. His body at first remained in his four-poster bed, guarded by a soldier and a sailor, while a succession of people filed past to pay their respects.

Garibaldi’s body was then placed in a tomb in the gardens of his farmhouse, although his great-granddaughter Anita Garibaldi, named after Giuseppe’s Brazilian first wife, believes his body may have later been removed by supporters eager to honour his wishes and have it cremated.

His association with the island of Caprera goes back to what is thought to have been his first visit in 1849. In 1855 he bought half the island using his legacy from his brother, Angelo.

After the Expedition of the Thousand concluded with his handing over of Sicily and Naples to Victor Emmanuel II in November, 1860, he retired there, although his military campaigning was not over and he made two further attempts to capture Rome for the new Italy.

A depiction of Garibaldi's body after his death

On both occasions, however, in 1862 and 1867, the French support for the Papal army proved too much.  On the second occasion he was arrested and held prisoner and his release was effectively conditional on him going into exile on Caprera.

Garibaldi remains an Italian hero and statues of him stand in many Italian squares and around the world. There is a bust of him directly outside the old Supreme Court Chamber in the US Capitol Building in Washington, DC.

He is even commemorated in Nottingham, England, in the colours worn by the football club Nottingham Forest, whose red shirts were based on the uniform worn by Garibaldi’s followers. Indeed, one of the club’s nicknames is the Garibaldi Reds.

Garibaldi's house is now a museum dedicated to his memory

Travel tip:

The island of Caprera, off the northern tip of the much larger island of Sardinia, was populated in the early days of the Western Roman Empire, as was evidenced by the discovery of the remains of Roman cargo ships there. It was unoccupied for centuries thereafter and the pinewoods that cover the island today began with trees planted by Garibaldi. Today it is a natural reserve for the royal seagull, the cormorant and the peregrine falcon. Garibaldi’s house nowadays is open to the public as a museum.

The harbour at La Maddalena

Travel tip:

The island of La Maddalena, which is connected to Caprera by a causeway, is renowned for its beaches and attracts many wealthy tourists to anchor their yachts in the harbour.  Like Caprera it was deserted for many centuries after the fall of the Western Roman Empire but began to develop in the late 18^th century when a town of the same name was established under the occupation of the Savoy-Piedmontese kingdom.  The road linking the town’s port area with the central Piazza Umberto is named Via Garibaldi.

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Charles Emmanuel IV – King of Sardinia

Monarch who was descended from Charles I of England

Court painter Domenico Duprà's portrait of
Charles Emmanuel IV

Charles Emmanuel IV, who was King of Sardinia from 1796 until he abdicated in 1802 and might once have had a claim to the throne of England, was born on this day in 1751 in Turin.

Born Carlo Emanuele Ferdinando Maria di Savoia, he was the eldest son of Victor Amadeus III, King of Sardinia, and of his wife Infanta Maria Antonia Ferdinanda of Spain. From his birth he was known as the Prince of Piedmont.

In 1775, he married Marie Clotilde of France, the daughter of Louis, Dauphin of France, and Princess Marie-Josèphe of Saxony, and sister of King Louis XVI of France.

Although it was essentially a political marriage over which they had little choice, the couple became devoted to one another.

With the death of his father in October 1796, Charles Emmanuel inherited the throne of Sardinia, a kingdom that included not only the island of Sardinia, but also the whole of Piedmont and other parts of north-west Italy.

He took on a difficult political situation along with the throne, only months after his father had signed the disadvantageous Treaty of Paris with the French Republic following the four-year War of the First Coalition, in which Napoleon’s army prevailed. The treaty ceded the Duchy of Savoy and the County of Nice and gave the French army free passage through Piedmont to attack other parts of Italy.

The death of his wife Marie Clothilde was
trigger for Charles Emmanuel's abdication

In December 1798, the French under General Barthèlemy Joubert occupied Turin and forced Charles Emmanuel to surrender all his territories on the Italian mainland and to withdraw to Sardinia.

After an unsuccessful attempt to regain Piedmont the following year, he and his wife went to live in Rome and in Naples as guests of the wealthy Colonna family.

It was the death in 1802 of Marie Clothilde that changed things for Charles Emmanuel, who was so grief-stricken he decided to abdicate in favour of his brother Victor Emmanuel. They had no children.

He retained the title of King but stepped away from responsibility and spent his life in Rome and in the nearby town of Frascati.

In Frascati he was a frequent guest of his cousin, Henry Benedict Stuart, Cardinal Duke of York and the last member of the Royal House of Stuart.

Charles was actually descended from Henrietta Anne Stuart, the youngest daughter of King Charles I of England and Scotland, whereas Henry Benedict Stuart was descended from James II, who was the second son of Charles I.

When Henry died in 1807, Charles Emmanuel became the senior heir-general of Charles I, although there is no evidence that he attempted to make a public claim to the title of King of England or Scotland.

The Palazzo Colonna in Rome, where Charles Emmanuel died

In fact, he appeared to have little interest in power. In 1815 at the age of 64, he took simple vows in the Society of Jesus (the Jesuits). Although he was never ordained to the priesthood, he spent much of the rest of his life at the Jesuit novitiate in Rome.

He died at the Palazzo Colonna in Rome in October 1819 and is buried in the Church of Sant'Andrea al Quirinale.

Travel tip:

Sardinia is a large island off the coast of Italy in the Mediterranean Sea. It has sandy beaches and a mountainous landscape. The southern city of Cagliari, from where Charles’s successor, Victor Emmanuel I, ruled, has a modern industrial area but also a medieval quarter called Castello, which has narrow streets, fine palaces and a 13th century Cathedral and is a fascinating part of the city to explore.

The Cattedrale di San Pietro Apostolo in Frascati

Travel tip:

Frascati, an ancient city 20km (miles) south-east of Rome in the Alban Hills, is notable for the Cattedrale di San Pietro Apostolo, which contains the tombstone of Charles Edward Stuart – Henry Benedict’s brother – who was also known as Bonnie Prince Charlie or the Young Pretender. Although his body was moved to St Peter’s in Rome, to be laid to rest with his mother and father, his heart was left in Frascati in a small urn under the floor below his monument.

More reading:

Victor Emmanuel I - the King who created the Carabinieri

Why Royal exile Bonnie Prince Charlie's heart lies in Frascati

Why Italy's first King was called Victor Emmanuel II

Also on this day:

1671: The birth of Gian Gastone dè Medici – the last Medici to rule Florence

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Francesco Cossiga - Italy's 8th President

Political career overshadowed by Moro murder

Francesco Cossiga

Former Italian President Francesco Cossiga was born on this day in 1928 in the Sardinian city of Sassari.

Cossiga, a Christian Democrat who had briefly served as Prime Minister under his predecessor, Sandro Pertini, held the office for seven years from 1985 to 1992. He was the eighth President of the Republic.

His presidency was unexceptional until the last two years, when he gained a reputation for controversial comments about the Italian political system and former colleagues.

It was during this time that another heavyweight of the Italian political scene, Giulio Andreotti, revealed the existence during the Cold War years of Gladio, a clandestine network sponsored by the American secret services and NATO that was set up amid fears that Italy would fall into the hands of Communists, either through military invasion from the East or, within Italy, via the ballot box.

Cossiga, said to have been obsessed with espionage, admitted to have been involved with the creation of Gladio in the years immediately following the end of the Second World War.

This led to renewed speculation surrounding the kidnap and murder of former Prime Minister Aldo Moro in 1978, an event that prevented a vote in the Italian parliament on the so-called 'historic compromise' whereby the Italian Communist Party, which was riding a peak of popularity at a time in which Italy seemed especially vulnerable to social unrest, would be given a direct role in government for the first time.

The event was a key moment in Cossiga's political career. As interior minister - effectively home secretary - in an Andreotti-led government, Cossiga was in charge of the operation to find and free Moro during the 55 days he was held captive.  He received a personal plea from Moro to negotiate with his captors, the ultra left-wing group Red Brigades, but the government's stance was not to talk with terrorists and Moro's pleas were ignored.

When Moro's body was discovered in the boot of a car parked almost exactly halfway between the Rome headquarters of the Christian Democrats and the Italian Communists, Cossiga rushed to the scene immediately and resigned the following day, declaring himself to be "politically dead".  Yet he returned within a year to be Prime Minister, his 14-month stint coinciding with another event that shook the Italian nation, when a bomb supposedly planted by terrorists from the extreme right killed 85 people at Bologna railway station.

Francesco Cossiga (right) pictured with Giulio Andreotti
shortly after the kidnap and murder of Aldo Moro

The Gladio revelations re-opened debate over the Moro affair, particularly over the question of how the authorities never located the Rome apartment where he was held, despite numerous tip-offs. As President, Cossiga survived an attempt by the Democratic Party of the Left to have him impeached but resigned in 1992, two months before his term of office was due to end.

Italy had no government at the time following the collapse of a third coalition led by Andreotti but Cossiga said he was unwilling to approve any more coalitions if he did not think they could tackle the problems of debt and organised crime, or prepare Italy adequately for monetary and political union with Europe.

He did not disappear from politics. By the late 1990s, he had formed his own small centrist party, the Democratic Union of the Republic, which he hoped might pull together the various strands of Italy's centre-right. However, the party was dissolved in 1999.

Thus ended a political career that had begun with Cossiga's election to the Italian parliament as a deputy for Sassari in 1958.

Although his father was a director in a bank, politics was in the family. One of his cousins was Enrico Berlinguer, who would later become secretary-general of Italy's Communist Party, and he was related to another former Prime Minister born in Sassari, Antonio Segni.  He joined the Christian Democrats aged only 16.

After his election he quickly scaled the Christian Democrat ladder, serving as Under-Secretary for Defence from 1966 to 1970, and in 1974 taking the unlikely brief of a roving minister charged with reforming government bureaucracy.  He became Interior Minister in 1976.

In 1960, he married Giuseppa Sigurani, from whom he was divorced in 1998. They had two children, Anna Maria, a writer, and Giuseppe, who followed his father into politics, serving as junior minister for defence in Silvio Berlusconi's Forza Italia-led government between 2008 and 2011.

Cossiga senior suffered from depression in his later years.  He died in 2010 aged 82, following cardiovascular problems.

Sassari's elegant Piazza d'Italia lit up by night

Travel tip:

Sassari, the second largest city in Sardinia with a population of 275,000 in the metropolitan area, is rich in art, culture and history, notable for beautiful palaces and elegant neoclassical architecture, examples of which can be found around Piazza d'Italia.  Also worth seeing are the Teatro Civico and the Fountain of the Rosello.

Travel tip:

Sardinia's white, sandy beaches and blue seas make it one of the most popular summer holiday destinations for Italian families as well as visitors from overseas, and is particularly crowded in August, when the population of many mainland cities decamp almost en masse for the cool of the mountains or the lure of the sea.  The Costa Smeralda, to the north-east of the island, remains a celebrity haunt and is consequently expensive, but there are plenty of less developed areas where the beaches are just as good.

(Photo of Francesco Cossiga courtesy of the Presidency of the Italian Republic)
(Photo of Piazza d'Italia in Sassari by Enigmatico27 CC BY-SA 3.0)

More reading:

How Enrico Berlinguer turned Italy's communists into a political force

The Red Brigades and the tragedy of Aldo Moro

Antonio Gramsci - Sardinian founder of the Italian Communist Party


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Goffredo Mameli - writer

Young poet wrote the stirring words of Italian national anthem

Goffredo Mameli, as depicted in a portrait on
display in the Museum of the Risorgimento

Patriot and poet Goffredo Mameli died on this day in 1849 in Rome.

A follower of political revolutionary Giuseppe Mazzini and a supporter of the Risorgimento movement, Mameli is the author of the words of the Italian national anthem, Fratelli d’Italia.

Mameli was the son of a Sardinian admiral and was born in Genoa in 1827 where his father was commanding the fleet of the Kingdom of Sardinia.

As he grew up he became interested in the theories of Mazzini and he joined a political movement that supported the idea of a united Italy.

Mameli was a 20-year-old student when he wrote the words that are still sung today by Italians as their national anthem.  They were sung to music for the first time in November 1847 to celebrate the visit of King Charles Albert of Sardinia to Genoa.

The anthem is known in Italian as L’inno di Mameli or Mameli’s hymn.

Mameli became involved in the movement to expel the Austrians from Italy and joined Garibaldi’s army. He also became director of a newspaper that launched a press campaign urging the people to rise up against Austria.

He died after being accidentally injured in the leg by the bayonet of one of his colleagues during a battle. The wound became infected and his leg had to be amputated. He died as a result of the infection two months before his 22nd birthday.

Mameli’s Hymn, or Fratelli d’Italia as it is sometimes referred to because of its opening line, is played on Italian state occasions and embraced by Italian sports fans and competitors with great enthusiasm at events all over the world.

Football commentators noted how passionately Italy's footballers sang the words before their matches at Euro 2016.

After Italian unification, the official hymn of the House of Savoy, Marcia Reale - Royal March - was adopted as the Italian national anthem.

But after Italy became a republic in 1946, L’inno di Mameli was chosen as the new national anthem. This was made official by a law passed in November 2012.

Mameli's original manuscript

Travel tip:

The first manuscript of the words to the anthem is preserved at the Istituto Mazziniano, part of the Museum of the Risorgimento which is located within the house where Mazzini was born in Via Lomellini in Genoa. It appears in a book belonging to Mameli in which he recorded his notes, thoughts and writing. There is also a copy of the first printed version of the hymn with hand annotations by Mameli himself.

Travel tip:

Mameli’s tomb is in the Cimitero Monumentale del Verano in Piazzale del Verano near the Basilica of San Lorenzo fuori le Mura in Rome, but his remains were transferred during the Fascist era to the mausoleum for Garibaldi soldiers on the Gianicolo hill in Rome.

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Enrico Berlinguer - Communist politician

Popular leader turned left-wing party into political force

Enrico Berlinguer

Enrico Berlinguer, who for more than a decade was Western Europe's most powerful and influential Communist politician, was born on this day in 1922 in the Sardinian city of Sassari.

As secretary-general of the Italian Communist Party from March 1972 until his death in 1984, he led the largest Communist movement outside the Eastern Bloc, coming close to winning a general election in 1976.

He achieved popularity by striving to establish the Italian Communists as a political force that was not controlled from Moscow, pledging a commitment to democracy, a parliamentary system, a mixed economy, and Italian membership of the Common Market and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization.

At its peak, Berlinguer's Westernized brand of Communism appealed to nearly a third of Italian voters.  His policies were adopted by other left-wing parties in Europe under what became known as Eurocommunism. 

As support for the previously dominant Christian Democrats waned in the 1970s, he proposed a ''historic compromise'' with other parties, rejecting the traditional left-wing vision of violent revolution, and declared that the Italian Communists would be happy to enter into a coalition with Christian Democrats and others.

In fact, in the elections of 1976, at a time when Italy faced economic collapse, Berlinguer's Communists came close to winning power in their own right, polling 34 per cent of the vote.  The Christian Democrats prevailed with 38 per cent but needed the support of some groups on the extreme right to do so.

The result sent shock waves across the Atlantic.  Political leaders in America, in particular Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, regarded Italy as a bulwark against the Eastern Bloc and were alarmed that the Italian Communists had been so close to power.

This cover of Time magazine reflected disquiet
 in the United States at Berlinguer's success

Despite his failure to become Prime Minister, Berlinguer remained one of Italy's foremost politicians. The Christian Democrats had to rely on Communist support to pass legislation and Berlinguer was thereby in a position to influence policy.

His party membership grew to 1.7 million and its success in local elections meant the Communists effectively governed nearly half of the Italian population anyway, controlling Rome and many of the major northern cities, including Turin, Milan, Bologna, Florence and Venice.

Berlinguer was born into a middle-class Sardinian family of noble descent yet the politics of his father Mario, a lawyer, leaned heavily towards the left. A socialist deputy and later senator, he was acquainted with a number of Communist leaders, including Antonio Gramsci and Palmiro Togliatti. The latter became Enrico Berlinguer's political mentor.

Having become a Communist Party member in 1943, Berlinguer was put in charge of the Young Communists in his home town of Sassari. He was arrested and jailed in 1944 after taking part in demonstrations against the Fascist regime.

Released after three months, he resumed his role as an organizer of communist youth, first in Milan and then Rome. He became a member of the party’s Central Committee in 1945 and the party executive in 1948.

He was elected to the Italian parliament in 1968, becoming the party's deputy secretary-general a year later and replacing Luigi Longo, an old-style Communist who had become the party leader after Togliatti's death in 1964, as secretary-general in March 1972.

Married with three children and fiercely protective of his private life, Berlinguer died in June 1984 aged only 62, having suffered a stroke while delivering a speech in Padua and never regaining consciousness.

Sassari's Piazza d'Italia is an example of the city's
elegant neoclassical architecture

Travel tip:

The second largest city in Sardinia, with a population of more than 125,000, Sassari is rich in art, culture and history.  It is well known for beautiful palazzi, the Fountain of the Rosello, and its elegant neoclassical architecture, such as Piazza d'Italia and the Teatro Civico.

Travel tip:

Padua - Padova in Italian - is a city in the Veneto region of northern Italy, best known for the frescoes by Giotto that adorn the Scrovegni Chapel and for the vast 13th-century Basilica of St. Anthony.

(Photo of Piazza d'Italia in Sassari by Gianni Careddu CC BY-SA 4.0)

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