Luca Toni - World Cup winner

Striker one of stars of 2006 triumph in Germany

Luca Toni with the World Cup in 2006. The hand gesture
is the one he habitually made after scoring a goal

The footballer Luca Toni, who played an important role in Italy’s achievement in winning the soccer World Cup in Germany in 2006, was born on this day in 1977 in the small town of Pavullo nel Frignano in Emilia-Romagna.

Toni scored twice in Italy’s 3-0 victory over Ukraine in the quarter-finals before starting as the Azzurri’s main striker in both the semi-final triumph over the hosts and the final against France, in which they eventually prevailed on penalties. Toni hit the bar with one header and saw another disallowed for offside in the final.

The goals were among 16 he scored in 47 appearances for the national team but it was his remarkable club career that makes him stand out in the history of Italian football.

A muscular 6ft 4ins in height and hardly the most mobile of forwards, he was never seen as a great player, more an old-fashioned centre forward of the kind rarely seen in today’s game.

Yet between his debut for his local club, Modena, in 1994 and his retirement in 2016 following his final season with Hellas Verona, Toni found the net 322 times in club football, which makes him the fourth most prolific goalscorer among all Italian players. Most times, he celebrated by shaking his hand near his right ear, which he once explained began as meaning 'listen up - I just scored a goal!'

Toni in the colours of Fiorentina, for whom
he scored 31 goals in the 2005-06 season 

He scored more career goals indeed than Roberto Baggio, Francesco Totti and Gianluca Vialli, all of whom would probably figure in most fans’ idea of an Italian ‘hall of fame’. More too than the prolific Juventus and AC Milan star Filippo Inzaghi.

Of his contemporaries, only Alessandro del Piero (346) scored more, while historically he doffs his cap only to Silvio Piola (364) and the Internazionale legend Giuseppe Meazza (338).

In a nomadic career that saw him wear the colours of 13 different Italian clubs - plus one in Germany and one in Dubai - Toni was twice the capocannoniere - top scorer - in Serie A, hitting 31 goals for Fiorentina in 2005-06, which was the biggest individual tally in Italy’s top division for 47 years, and then sharing the honour with Inter’s Mauro Icardi some nine years later, in the 2014-15 season, when he scored 22 for Hellas Verona.

Toni did not make his Serie A debut until he was 23, by which time he had already played for five clubs in six seasons in the lower divisions.  He made his first start in the top flight for Vicenza and subsequently played alongside Baggio and Pep Guardiola at Brescia.

It was with Palermo in Serie B that Toni made his first real impact as a goalscorer. He scored 30 times as the Sicilian club won promotion in 2004 to end an absence of more than 30 years from Serie A and a further 20 the following season as the Rosanero qualified for the UEFA Cup for the first time in their history.

Toni was the No 9 for the Azzurri
in the 2006 World Cup final

Those goals brought his first call-up for the Azzurri and a big-money move to Fiorentina, where his goals in 2005-06 propelled Fiorentina to fourth place and qualification for the Champions League, although the place was rescinded after Fiorentina were caught up in the calciopoli match-fixing scandal.

Toni showed great loyalty to the fallen club, offering to stay with them even after they were ordered to start the following season in Serie B, a sentence commuted on appeal to a 15-points deduction in Serie A.  When he left at the end of the 2007 season it was only because an approach from Bayern Munich in Germany allowed him to keep his pledge of not joining a rival Italian club.

His first season in the Bundesliga was a huge success, his 24 goals helping Bayern win the title. He also scored both goals as Bayern beat Borussia Dortmund 2-1 to add the German Cup and complete the double. Despite an ankle injury keeping him out for a long spell, he still managed 14 goals in his second season.

After falling out with manager Louis Van Gaal midway through the 2009-10 season, Toni was on the move again, spending brief spells with Roma, Genoa, Juventus, Al Nasr in Dubai and Fiorentina again. It looked like his career was drawing to a close but then newly-promoted Verona took a gamble by offering him a one-year contract to play on beyond his 37th birthday.

It paid off handsomely as Toni enjoyed a renaissance, rediscovering his old deadliness in the penalty area to score 20 goals in the 2013-14 season and 22 in the 2014-15 campaign, by the end of which he was 38, when his 22 goals made him the oldest capocannoniere in the history of Serie A.

Toni (left) and his teammate Miroslav Klose
in the Bayern Munich team in 2007-08

His retirement at the end of the 2015-16 season came with a fairytale ending in a 2-1 home win over already-crowned Serie A champions Juventus, in which he scored Verona’s first goal with a penalty taken in the so-called Panenka style, chipped delicately into the centre of the goal after the goalkeeper commits himself to diving left or right.

After retirement, Toni took courses with a view to remaining at Verona as director of football but left in 2017 and has more recently worked as a pundit.

Married to the model Maria Cecchetto, with whom he has two children, he was back on a football pitch earlier this month in a star-studded testimonial for the great Azzurri midfielder Andrea Pirlo, getting on the scoresheet as usual as the match ended 7-7.

The Castle of Montecuccolo at Pavullo nel Frignano

Travel tip:

Pavullo nel Frignano, where Luca Toni was born, is a town of around 17,000 inhabitants in the Modenese Apennines. It is home to the medieval Castle of Montecuccolo, birthplace of the 17th century condottiero - mercenary - Raimondo Montecuccoli. Pavullo sadly suffered extensive damage during the Second World War because of its proximity to the German defences on Gothic Line.

The Arena di Verona hosted a football match in the early
days of the local football team, Hellas Verona

Travel tip:

Toni’s final team, Hellas Verona, acquired its name after it was founded in 1903 by a group of students from the prestigious local lyceum, where a classics professor put forward the name Hellas, which is the Greek equivalent of the Latin word patria, meaning homeland. The city was largely indifferent towards football at first but the Veronese began to take more of an interest after the club staged a game against their local rivals Bentegodi in the city's Roman amphitheatre, now famous as the Arena di Verona, attracting national media attention.

Also on this day:

1805: Napoleon Bonaparte crowned King of Italy

1955: Formula One motor racing champion Alberto Ascari tragically dies in a crash at Monza

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Marco Delvecchio - footballer

Striker who became TV dance show star

Marco Delvecchio scored four goals in 22
appearances for the Italy national team

The former Roma and Italy striker Marco Delvecchio, who launched a new career in television after finishing runner-up in the Italian equivalent of Strictly Come Dancing, was born on this day in 1973 in Milan.

Delvecchio scored 83 goals in exactly 300 appearances for Roma, where he was part of the side that won the Scudetto in 2000-01 and where he became a huge favourite with fans of the giallorossi because of his penchant for scoring against city rivals Lazio.

His record of nine goals in the Rome derby between 2002 and 2009 was the best by any player in the club’s history until that mark was overtaken by the Roma great Francesco Totti, whose career tally against Lazio was 11.

Delvecchio’s talents were somewhat underappreciated at international level. He made 22 appearances for the azzurri and the first of his four goals was in the final of Euro 2000 against France, although he finished on the losing side. Yet after being favoured by Dino Zoff, he was not so popular with Zoff’s successor as head coach, Giovanni Trapattoni, who took him to the 2002 World Cup but did not give him a game, and omitted him from his squad for the 2004 Euros.

Delvecchio enjoyed his best
days in a Roma shirt

Unusually, after 17 seasons, 395 appearances and 94 goals in professional football, Delvecchio ended his career with an amateur club in the Rome area, Pescatori Ostia, for whom he scored 34 goals in one season.

Three years after quitting football, Delvecchio accepted an invitation to appear in the 2012 edition of Ballando con le Stelle (Dancing with the Stars) and finished second with professional partner Sara Di Vaira. 

Popular with viewers, Delvecchio then teamed up with former Internazionale and Italy striker Christian Vieri in their own show, called Bobo e Marco - i re del ballo (Bobo and Marco - the kings of dance) - on satellite channel Sky Uno, in which the two ex-players went on their travels to examine dance culture around the world.

Delvecchio’s TV career has continued to develop. A regular football pundit on Sky Sports, Teleradiostereo, Retesport and Radio 105, he has recently taken part in a third dance show, Dance Dance Dance, on FoxLife, paired with his 18-year-old daughter Federica.

Almost 6ft 2ins (1.86m) in height, Delvecchio was characteristically strong in the air as a player but with quick feet too.  Brought up through the youth system at Inter, he made his senior debut shortly before he turned 19 in a Coppa Italia match against Juventus and his first appearance in Serie A came against Fiorentina a few days later.

He established himself in the Inter team after gaining experience on loan at Venezia and Udinese but was then sold to Roma, where he became a key player in a team bursting with attacking talent, playing initially alongside Daniel Fonseca and Abel Balbo and later with Gabriel Batistuta and Vincenzo Montella, as well as the emerging Francesco Totti.

Delvecchio with professional partner Sara Di Vaira
in the 2012 edition of Ballando con le stelle

Trophy success came his way under the coaching of Fabio Capello, who led Roma to the Serie A title in 2000-01 and the Supercoppa Italiana later in 2001.

In international football, Delvecchio was a member of the Italian team that won the UEFA European Under-21 championships in 1994 and 1996 and played for the Italy team at the 1996 Olympics in Atlanta, before making his senior azzurri debut under Zoff in December 1998.

Established in the Zoff team that qualified for Euro 2000, hosted by Belgium and the Netherlands, Delvecchio was close to scoring a winner under the now defunct Golden Goal rule in the semi-final against the Netherlands, which the azzurri ultimately won on penalties, before scoring his first senior international goal to put Italy ahead in the final against France in Rotterdam, which ended in heartache for the Italians after Sylvain Wiltord equalised in the last minute of stoppage time, forcing a period of extra time in which David Trezeguet hit a Golden Goal winner for France.

In domestic football, Delvecchio left Roma in 2005 and had spells with Brescia, Parma and Ascoli, where injury forced the termination of his contract and obliged him to have a year out of the game. He came out of retirement to help a former Roma teammate, Massimiliano Cappioli, launch his coaching career with Pescatori Ostia in Eccellenza Lazio, an amateur regional league.

Ostia has a wide sandy beach, which makes it a popular
destination for holiday-makers and day-trippers from Rome

Travel tip:

The seaside resort of Ostia, where Delvecchio finished his career, lies 30km (19 miles) to the southwest of Rome, situated just across the Tiber river from Fiumicino, home of Rome’s largest international airport, it adjoins the remains of the ancient Roman city of Ostia Antica. Many Romans spend their summer holidays in the modern town, swelling a population of about 85,000.

The Stadio Olimpico in Rome has hosted numerous
major football matches

Travel tip:

FC Roma’s home ground is the Stadio Olimpico, the largest sports facility in the city, located within the Foro Italico sports complex, north of the city. The athletics stadium for the 1960 Olympics, the structure belongs to the Italian National Olympic Committee but is primarily a football stadium. Roma are joint tenants with city rivals Lazio and the ground also hosts the Coppa Italia final. It was rebuilt for the 1990 FIFA World Cup and it hosted the tournament final. Originally called Stadio dei Cipressi as part of the Foro Mussolini complex, the 70,000-capacity stadium has been the venue for four European Cup/Champions League finals, two European championship and one World Cup final, in 1990, as well as numerous high-profile athletics events.

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Alberto Zaccheroni - football coach

First Italian coach to lead a foreign nation to success

Alberto Zaccheroni achieved success at many
levels in Italian football

The football coach Alberto Zaccheroni, who won the Serie A title with AC Milan and steered the Japan national team to success in the Asia Cup, was born on this day in 1953 in Meldola, a town in Emilia-Romagna.

In a long coaching career, Zaccheroni has taken charge of 13 teams in Italy, a club side in China and two international teams, Japan and the United Arab Emirates.

In common with many coaches in Italy, Zaccheroni began at semi-professional level and worked his way up through the professional leagues.  Before winning the Scudetto with Milan in 1999, he had twice won titles at Serie D (fourth tier) level and twice in Serie C.

Zaccheroni played as a fullback, with the youth team at Bologna and the Serie D team Cesenatico in Emilia-Romagna, but his career was hampered by a lung disease he contracted at the age of 17, which meant he could not train or play for two years.

He quit playing in his mid-20s and began to coach Cesenatico’s youth teams.  His coaching talents began to attract attention when, in two consecutive seasons, he was asked to take over on the bench for Cesenatico’s first team following the sacking of the head coach and on each occasion saved them from relegation.

This brought him a head coach’s position in his own right at Riccione, near Rimini, where he won promotion to Serie C2, and then at Baracca Lugo, the team near Ravenna that takes its name from Francesco Baracca, the First World War flying ace who was born in the town.

The German striker Oliver Bierhoff served
Zaccheroni at Udinese and AC Milan

He achieved promotion in consecutive seasons with Baracca Lugo, taking them into Serie C2 and then C1, before continuing his rapid rise with Venezia, where he won the Serie C1 play-off to take the club of La Serenissima into Serie B for the first time in 24 years.

After Venezia, Zaccheroni spent a season with Bologna before taking up his first post outside northern Italy at Cosenza in Calabria, where he had a remarkable Serie B season, taking over a team that had began the campaign with a nine-point penalty yet not only avoided relegation but at one point were in contention for promotion to Serie A.

As a result, he landed his first Serie A post with Udinese, where he became known as the father of 3-4-3, the tactical formation he favoured and which became the stock system for other coaches, such as Antonio Conte, who employed it with great success at Juventus and Chelsea at club level, and with the Italian national team.

Bringing together an Italian (Paolo Poggi), a German (Oliver Bierhoff) and a Brazilian (Marcio Amoroso) in his forward line, Zaccheroni steered Udinese to 10th place, fifth and third in consecutive seasons.  The fifth place in 1997 meant the Friulian club qualified for the UEFA Cup for the first time in its history.

This opened the door to even bigger challenges, this time with AC Milan, one of the giants of Italian football.  Zaccheroni was successful immediately, delivering the club’s 16th Scudetto in their centenary season, with his former Lazio star Oliver Bierhoff the leading goalscorer.

Zaccheroni took charge of the Japan
national team in 2011

Only then did Zaccheroni’s almost continuous record of success come to a halt. He could not replicate his domestic success in the Champions League and when Milan finished sixth in 2000-01, his third season in charge, and therefore qualified only for a UEFA Cup place, he was dismissed by president Silvio Berlusconi.

Faced with much higher demands, he subsequently spent only one season at Lazio, qualifying for the UEFA Cup, and one season with Internazionale, where he finished fourth and thereby clinched a Champions League place, but on each occasion he was replaced as head coach with Roberto Mancini.  

From Inter, Zaccheroni went to Torino and then Juventus, again without success, before the chance arose to take charge of the Japan national team in 2011.

Despite language problems - Zaccheroni struggled to learn any Japanese and had to communicate with his players either via an interpreter or, as one of his players later explained, with only gestures when no interpreter was available - he led the Japan to the Asia Cup in his first season in charge, the first Italian coach to be successful with an international team other than Italy.

Subsequently, Zaccheroni’s Japan won the East Asia Cup in 2013 and qualified for the 2014 World Cup finals in Brazil.

He left after the 2014 World Cup, when Japan finished bottom of their group. Following an unsuccessful stint in the up-and-coming Chinese professional league as coach of of Beijing Guoan, Zaccheroni accepted his second international posting as head coach of the United Arab Emirates, with whom he reached the final of the Gulf Nations Cup in January this year.

The castle at Zaccheroni's home town of Meldola

Travel tip:

Zaccheroni’s home town of Meldola, situated some 14km (9 miles) south of Forli in the foothills of the Apennines, with a population of just over 10,000, was once notable for the production of silk.  The site of a large Roman aqueduct, now submerged, it has a well-preserved medieval castle. The Rocca della Caminate fortress was a former holiday home of the Fascist leader Benito Mussolini.

The canal-port at Cesenatico was built to designs
by Leonardo da Vinci

Travel tip:

The Adriatic resort of Cesenatico, where Zaccheroni began his coaching career, is 16km (10 miles) from the city of Cesena, on the stretch of coast between Rimini and Ravenna, has a number of distinctions, including an 118-metre office and apartment building that was once the tallest building in Italy and a port and canal built from designs commissioned of Leonardo da Vinci. It also has a handsome, Liberty-style Grand Hotel and a museum dedicated to the former cycling champion Marco Pantani.

More reading:

Massimiliano Allegri, the former Milan coach who broke records at Juventus

Roberto Mancini - the Italian who led Manchester City to their first title for 44 years

Why Milan great Franco Baresi was called the player of the century

Also on this day:

April Fools' Day - Italian style

1946: The birth of former AC Milan and Italy coach Arrigo Sacchi


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Giuseppe Bergomi – footballer

World Cup winner who spent his whole career with Inter

Giuseppe Bergomi made 87
appearances for the national team

The footballer Giuseppe Bergomi, renowned as one of the best defenders in the history of Italian football and a member of the World Cup-winning Azzurri side of 1982, was born on this day in 1963 in Milan.

Bergomi spent his entire club career with the Milan side Internazionale, spanning 20 years in which he made 756 appearances, including 519 in Serie A, which was a club record until it was overtaken by the Argentine-born defender Javier Zanetti, who went on to total 856 club appearances before he retired in 2014.

In international football, Bergomi played 87 times for the Italian national team, of which he was captain during the 1990 World Cup finals, in which Italy reached the semi-finals as hosts.

Alongside the brothers Franco, of AC Milan, and Giuseppe Baresi, his team-mate at Inter, and the Juventus trio Gaetano Scirea, Antonio Cabrini and Claudio Gentile, he was part of the backbone of the Italian national team for much of the 1980s.

He made his Azzurri debut in April 1982, only a couple of months before the World Cup finals in Spain, aged just 18 years and 3 months, making him the youngest player to feature in a match for Italy since the Second World War.

Not surprisingly, given his young age, he was not a first-choice in the 1982 side under coach Enzo Bearzot.

Bergomi in his early days 

But he came on as a substitute against Brazil in the memorable 3-2 second phase win and on the strength of that was named in the starting line-up against Poland in the semi-final because Gentile was suspended.

Such was his performance, displaying a maturity beyond his years, that Bearzot felt he could not drop him for the final against West Germany.

In the event, given the job of marking the dangerous Karl-Heinz Rummenigge, he was one of Italy’s best players, rendering the German star so ineffective he was substituted in the second half as Italy ran out 3-1 winners. Bergomi also played a part in the build-up to Marco Tardelli’s famous goal.

Italy did not progress beyond the last 16 in the 1986 World Cup in Mexico but under his captaincy the Azzurri to a third-place finish, losing to Argentina on penalties in the semi-final before beating England in the play-off for third place.

Bergomi’s international career seemed to be over after he was sent off against Norway in a qualifying match for the 1992 European Championships, prefacing a long period in which he was not selected.

Yet he made a surprise comeback to play in his fourth World Cup finals in France in 1998, at the age of 34.  Alongside Fabio Cannavaro, Alessandro Costacurta and Paolo Maldini, he played in three matches as Italy reached the last eight before being eliminated on penalties by the hosts and eventual champions France.

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Versatile enough to play in any defensive role, as full back, centre back or sweeper, he was renowned for his positional strength and his ability to make surging forward runs in his favoured position of right back.

He was also a fierce tackler, although he had a short fuse at times.  Much admired as a sportsman with an innate sense of fairness, he sometimes struggled to contain his emotions and was actually sent off a total of 12 times in his career.

The highlights of his career with Inter included the Serie A title in 1988-89 and three UEFA Cup medals in the 1990s, Inter lifting the trophy in 1991, 1994 and 1998.

Affectionately referred to as Lo zio – the uncle – during his playing career, he was named as one of the 100 best players in the history of football in 2004 in a list compiled by the Brazil legend Pelé to mark the 100^th anniversary of FIFA 100.

Since retiring as a player, Bergomi has done some coaching and currently works as a pundit at Sky Sports Italia. He frequently co-commentates on Serie A matches alongside Fabio Caressa, with whom he described Italy’s victory in the 2006 World Cup in Germany.

Inter was formed by a group of friends
who met in a Milan restaurant

Travel tip:

Bergomi’s home-town club, Internazionale, was originally established by expatriate British football enthusiasts but after a dispute over whether foreign players should be signed that a breakaway group formed following a meeting at the Ristorante L'Orologio in Via Giuseppe Mengoni in Milan, a short distance from the opera house, Teatro alla Scala.  An artist, Giorgio Muggiani, who had developed an enthusiasm for football while studying in Switzerland, was the driving force behind the new club and it was he who designed the club's famous logo, featuring the colours blue, black and gold. 

The Arena Civica was Inter's home for 37 years

Travel tip:

For many years, Internazionale's home ground was the Arena Civica, in the heart of Milan. Opened in 1807 in the city's Parco Sempione, behind the Castello Sforzesco, the arena is one of Milan's main examples of neoclassical architecture, an elliptical amphitheatre commissioned by Napoleon Bonaparte soon after he became King of Italy in 1805.  Napoleon wanted it to be Milan's equivalent of the Colosseum in Rome.  It was Inter’s home for 37 years until they moved to the Giuseppe Meazza Stadium in the San Siro district of Milan, which they share with AC Milan.

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Gianluca Pagliuca – record-breaking goalkeeper

No one has saved more penalties in Serie A matches

Gianluca Pagliuca played for Italy
in the 1994 World Cup final

The footballer Gianluca Pagliuca, once the most expensive goalkeeper in the world, record-holder for the most appearances by a goalkeeper in the Italian soccer championship and still the stopper with the most penalty saves in Serie A, was born on this day in 1966 in Ceretolo, a small town about 10km (6 miles) from the centre of Bologna.

Pagliuca made 592 appearances in Serie A, taking the record previously held by Italy’s World Cup-winning captain Dino Zoff for the most by a goalkeeper in the top division of the Italian League. He held the record for 10 years from September 2006 until it was overtaken by another of Italy’s greatest goalkeepers, Gianluigi Buffon, in 2016.

He played for four major clubs in his career, starting with Sampdoria, with whom he won the Serie A title – the Scudetto – in 1990-91, playing in the team that included Gianluca Vialli, Roberto Mancini, Beppe Dossena, Attilio Lombardo and Ivano Bonetti.

After Sampdoria, he represented Internazionale in Milan, his home-town club Bologna and the small club Ascoli, from Ascoli Piceno in Marche.

He also made 39 appearances for the Italian national team and was chosen for three World Cup finals squads, picking up a runners-up medal in the United States in 1994, even though his participation was marred by a suspension for two matches.

Pagliuca was renowned for saving penalties

This followed his red card in Italy’s group match against Norway, when he was sent off for handling the ball outside his penalty area, in the process becoming the first goalkeeper to be dismissed in the history of the World Cup finals.

Pagliuca’s achievements with Sampdoria, where he also won a European Cup-winners’ Cup medal and a runners-up medal in the Champions League following a 1-0 defeat against Barcelona at Wembley, earned him a move to Inter in 1994 for a fee of £7 million, which at the time was the highest fee to be paid for a goalkeeper.

At Inter he played in two consecutive UEFA Cup finals, defeating Italian rivals Lazio in the second, and might have stayed in Milan longer had new coach Marcello Lippi not brought in Angelo Peruzzi from his former club, Juventus, to be first choice.

At that time, in 1999, Pagliuca had the possibility of continuing his career in England with Aston Villa, a club he had followed as a teenager when satellite TV channels first allowed Italian audiences to follow English football.

He chose instead to join Bologna, his first love as a boy growing up in the city’s outskirts, although he said that playing at Villa Park for Inter in a UEFA Cup tie in 1994 had been one of the proudest moments of his career.

Pagliuca won the Serie A title
with Sampdoria

Inter lost that tie on a penalty shoot-out, although in keeping with his reputation Pagliuca did save one of Villa’s penalties. In Serie A, his tally of 24 penalty saves has still not been beaten.

He also saved a penalty in the shoot-put that settled the 1994 World Cup final in Pasadena, although Italy were beaten by Brazil after both Franco Baresi and Roberto Baggio missed with their kicks and Daniele Massaro saw his attempt saved.

When Pagliuca announced his retirement while playing for Ascoli in 2007, he was 40 years old and had racked up an incredible 786 competitive appearances in all competitions.

Since quitting as a player, Pagliuca has combined working for Bologna as a member of the coaching staff with appearing on Sky Italia and the Mediaset subscription channels as a pundit.

Ceretolo is a popular residential area outside Bologna

Travel tip:

Ceretolo, where Pagliuca was born and played his first football with the Polisportiva Ceretolese amateur club, was for many centuries a hamlet outside the larger town of Casalecchio di Reno, a few kilometres outside Bologna in the Emilia-Romagna region.  It has an 18^th century church, dedicated to the saints Antonio and Andrea and a bell tower that survived both an earthquake in 1928 and bombing in the Second World War. In more recent years it has grown into popular residential area.

The church of San Michele in Bosco offers panoramic views
over the city of Bologna

Travel tip:

Visitors to Bologna can enjoy impressive panoramic views across the city by taking only a short trip out of the city centre into the Colli Bolognesi, the hills just to the south of the city, which itself is built on a flat plain at the southern edge of the Po Valley. One good vantage point is the church of San Michele in Bosco, which was built during the Middle Ages and refurbished by Olivetan monks in the 17^th century as part of a religious complex that included a convent. The churchyard can be reached by a 10-minute bus ride or on foot from the centre and offers a view across the whole city.

Also on this day:

1737: The death of renowned violin maker Antonio Stradivari

1957: The death of Camillo Castiglioni, once the richest man in Europe

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Angelo Schiavio - footballer

Scored goal that won Italy's first World Cup

Angelo Schiavio played all his club
football with Bologna

Angelo Schiavio, the hero of the Italian football team’s first World Cup victory in 1934, was born on this day in 1905 in Bologna.

The centre forward, a prolific goalscorer for his home-town club in Serie A, scored the winning goal in the final against Czechoslovakia to hand victory to the Azzurri in the 16-team tournament, of which the Italians were hosts.

In the final at the Stadio Flaminio in Rome, the Azzurri had gone behind to a goal by the Czech winger Antonin Puc with 19 minutes remaining, but equalised 10 minutes later through Raimundo Orsi, the Argentina-born forward from Juventus, taking the match into extra time.

Schiavio struck the decisive goal, driven home with his right foot from a pass by Enrique Guaita, another Argentine – one of 12 to represent Italy and Argentina in the days before playing for more than one nation was outlawed.

It was his fourth goal of the tournament, sparking massive celebrations in Rome and across Italy, albeit in a mood of triumph hijacked by Benito Mussolini and his Fascist regime.

Rumours circulated, almost inevitably, that match officials had been bribed to make decisions favouring the Italians, much to the frustration of coach Vittorio Pozzo, although he was able to validate the victory four years later when the Azzurri retained the trophy in France.

Schiavio hailed from a large family – he was the eighth child – who had originated in Gorla, a tiny hamlet in the hills above Lake Como, close to the villages of Zelbio, Valeso and Erno.

Schiavio's goal beats the Czech 'keeper in the 1934 final

They had run a silk mill before moving to Bologna a year before Angelo was born to start a business selling clothing and underwear made from wool, under the name of Schiavio-Stoppani.

Their first store, opened in 1919, was located on the corner of Via Clavature and Via dei Toschi, right in the historic centre of the city.  The business would grow, expanding into sports equipment, and continued to trade as a family enterprise until the early part of the 20^th century.

Angelo Schiavio played an active part in the business himself once his career was over.

As a player, renowned for his power and pace as a centre forward, with excellent dribbling skills and a fierce shot, he made 348 appearances for Bologna between 1922 and 1938, scoring 242 goals, having made his debut against Juventus in January 1923, at the age of just 17. By the end of his first half-season he had scored six goals.

He helped Bologna win the scudetto – the Italian Serie A title – for the first time in their history in 1924-25, winning three more championships in the rossoblu shirt.

Schiavio’s career goals tally remains the highest by any Bologna player and the fourth highest among all Italians. Only Silvio Piola, Giuseppe Meazza and, from the modern era, Francesco Totti have scored more goals over their careers.

Schiavio in the
national colours

For the Azzurri, he struck 15 goals in 21 appearances, scoring twice on his debut against Yugoslavia in Padua in 1925. He twice scored hat-tricks for the national team, the first time in an incredible 11-3 victory over Egypt in the third-place match at the 1928 Olympics in the Netherlands, the second in the opening match of the 1934 World Cup, when Italy thrashed the United States 7-1.

The final was his last international appearance, although he would play on in club football until 1938.

As a coach, he was twice part of a technical committee at Bologna and served the national team in a similar capacity between 1953 and 1958, before leaving football and devoting himself to the family business.

He died in 1990 at the age of 84 and is buried in the Monumental Cemetery of Certosa in Bologna.

Lake Como has an abundance of picturesque lakeside
towns and villages

Travel tip:

Zelbio, Valeso and Erno are picturesque small villages nestling in the tree-lined hills that descend gently towards the shore of the western branch of Lake Como, about 50km (31 miles) north of Milan, about 25km (16 miles) from Como itself and a similar distance from Bellagio.  The best way to appreciate the beauty of the area is to take one of the ferry services that link the lakeside towns.

Piazza Maggiore in the centre of Bologna

Travel tip:

The Schiavo-Stoppani store, on the corner of Via Clavature and Via dei Toschi, was in a prime location in the centre of Bologna, only a few metres from the historic heart of the city in Piazza Maggiore.  Via Clavature is an interesting, narrow street lined with fruit and vegetable stores and has several bars and restaurants.

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Paolo Rossi - World Cup hero

Goalscorer who bounced back from two-year ban

(This article was written in 2017; sadly, Paolo Rossi passed away in 2020 at the age of 64)

Paolo Rossi celebrates his goal in the 1982
World Cup final in Spain

The footballer Paolo Rossi, whose goals steered Italy to World Cup glory in 1982, was born on this day in 1956 in Prato in Tuscany.

At the peak of his career in club football, in which his best years were with Juventus and Vicenza, Rossi scored almost 100 Serie A and Serie B goals in seven seasons.

Yet for many his exploits with the Italian national team define his career. In 48 appearances he scored 20 goals, including six in the 1982 finals in Spain, when he won the Golden Boot as the tournament’s top scorer and the Golden Ball as the best player.

In 1982 he also won the Ballon D’Or, the prestigious award given to the player of the season across all the European leagues, following in the footsteps of Omar Sivori and Gianni Rivera to become the third Italian player to win the vote, in which company he has since been joined by Roberto Baggio and Fabio Cannavaro.

His success story is all the more remarkable for the fact that he scaled so many personal peaks after being banned from football for two years in a match-fixing scandal, although he denied the accusations levelled at him.

The 1982 World Cup saved his career and his reputation, although the fairytale would never have happened but for the faith shown in him by the national coach, Enzo Bearzot.

Italy's coach, Enzo Bearzot, stood by Rossi

Bearzot’s selection of Rossi for the squad he took to Spain came barely a month after his suspension was lifted and sparked an outcry in Italy. Apart from those who thought he was unworthy of wearing the Azzurri shirt, others argued he would be too lacking in fitness to make an effective contribution.

Yet Bearzot not only believed in Rossi’s innocence, he also recalled the three goals the striker had scored in the 1978 World Cup finals in Argentina and was convinced he could make an impact again.

His faith was borne out totally.  Rossi looked off the pace at the start of the tournament but found his feet memorably in the second phase, scoring all three of Italy’s goals in a 3-2 win against a superior Brazil team that still ranks as one of the greatest matches in World Cup history.

He went on to score both Italy’s goals as they defeated Poland in the semi-finals and opened the scoring in Italy’s 3-1 victory over West Germany in the final.

As a boy, Rossi played his first football with an amateur team in the Santa Lucia area of Prato. At the age of 12, he was spotted by a scout from Juventus, who had also been interested in his brother, Rossano, but had sent him home after a year.

His mother, who had always been worried about Rossano having to fend for himself in Turin, was reluctant to suffer a similarly anxious time with Paolo, especially since Rossano’s dreams ultimately came to nothing.

Paolo Rossi in action for Juventus

But Juventus were persuasive, offering substantial inducements for him to sign, and ultimately in 1972 a deal was agreed.

It took a long time for his career to take off, however. He suffered a series of serious knee injuries and apart from a handful of Coppa Italia games he did not make any real progress towards a regular place in the first team at Juventus.

A spell on loan with Como did not change his fortunes and he might have been told to seek an alternative career had Lanerossi Vicenza, the Serie B club, not stepped in with another loan deal.

Rossi had, until then, been seen as a winger, slight in build but with the speed to beat defenders. Vicenza’s coach, Giovan Battista Fabbri, had other ideas, reckoning that Rossi’s pace could be deployed in the middle, despite his lack of physical stature. 

It proved a masterstroke.  Rossi scored 21 goals to help Vicenza win promotion to Serie A and followed it with 24 in the top flight as Vicenza finished second, a remarkable performance.  Rossi became the first player to be top scorer in Serie B and Serie A in consecutive seasons.

In the event, Vicenza’s flame went out as quickly as it had ignited. They paid 2.612 million lire to make Rossi their own player, making him the world’s most expensive footballer, which he rewarded with another 15 goals, despite missing many games through injury. Yet Vicenza were relegated.

Rossi (right) with Giovan Battista Fabbri, the
coach of Vicenza, who turned him into a striker

Had they stayed up, Rossi might never have been embroiled in the match-fixing allegations.  Instead, in order to continue playing in Serie A and continue his international career, he went on loan to Perugia, who were heavily implicated in what became known as the Totonero scandal after a match against Avellino, in which Rossi scored twice, was found to have been rigged to end in a draw.

Rossi admitted he had been approached by a third party interested in fixing the result but said he had agreed to nothing.  Nonetheless, he was found guilty and banned for three years, reduced on appeal to two.

Disillusioned, he threatened to leave Italy for a new life elsewhere but Juventus bought him back from Vicenza and the bianconeri finally saw the real Rossi.  He helped them win the Serie A title – the ‘Scudetto’ - the UEFA Cup and the European Cup during a period when his very presence in a team seemed to guarantee their winning a trophy.

Since retiring, Rossi has run a real estate company, opened an agritourism complex in Bucine, near Arezzo, taken part in Ballando con le Stelle – the Italian version of Strictly Come Dancing – and worked for several newspapers and television stations as a columnist and pundit.

He has also run for election to the European Parliament and worked on behalf of a number of charities.  Married to journalist Federica Cappelletti, he has three children.

The Castello dell'Imperatore in Prato

Travel tip:

Paolo Rossi’s home city of Prato is the second largest in Tuscany after Florence and has a considerable number of historic churches and palaces and two castles, yet is rarely part of anyone’s tourist itinerary.  Attractions include beautiful frescoes by Filippo Lippi inside the Duomo and the external pulpit by Michelozzo and Donatello, the beautiful Palazzo Pretorio and Piazza del Comune where it sits.  The remains of Castello dell’Imperatore are also worth exploring.  Prato’s traditional textile industry, which today employs many of the city’s large Chinese population, once saw it described as ‘the Manchester of Italy.’

Palladio's Villa Capra, known as La Rotonda

Travel tip:

Known as both the city of Palladio and, on account of its historical trade in precious metals, the ‘city of gold’, Vicenza is one of the gems of the Veneto, with a centre rich in beautiful architecture, much of which has been built or influenced by the 16^th century architect Andrea Palladio, who also left his mark on the area by building many impressive villas in the countryside around Vicenza, the most famous of which, the symmetrically four-sided Villa Almerico Capra, commonly known as La Rotonda. There are some 23 buildings in the city itself that were designed by Palladio, including perhaps the city’s most popular attraction, the Teatro Olimpico, which was his last work.

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Renzo Piano – architect

Designer of innovative buildings is now an Italian senator

Renzo Piano was born into a family of builders

Award-winning architect Renzo Piano was born on this day in 1937 in Genoa.

Piano is well-known for his high-tech designs for public spaces and is particularly famous for the Centre Georges Pompidou in Paris, which he worked on in collaboration with the British architect, Richard Rogers.

Among the many awards and prizes Piano has received for his work are the Japan Art Association’s Praemium Imperiale prize for architecture in 1995, the Pritzker Architecture Prize in 1998 and the American Institute of Architects Gold Medal in 2008.

Piano was born into a family of builders and graduated from the Polytechnic in Milan in 1964. He completed his first building, the IPE factory in Genoa, in 1968 with a roof of steel and reinforced polyester.

He worked with a variety of architects, including his father, Carlo Piano, until he established a partnership with Rogers, which lasted from 1971-1977.

The Shard in London is one of
Piano's landmark buildings

They made the Centre Georges Pompidou look like an urban machine with their innovative design and it immediately gained the attention of the international architectural community.

In Italy, Piano designed a new look for the old port of Genoa to transform it from a rundown industrial area into a cultural centre and tourist attraction. Other important commissions in Italy were the San Nicola Stadium in Bari, started in 1987 and completed in time for the 1990 football World Cup, and the Auditorium Parco della Musica, built between 1994 and 2002 in Rome.

One of his most celebrated 21st century projects, notable for its green architecture, was a new building for the California Academy of Science in San Francisco’s Golden Gate Park, which was completed in 2008.

Piano converted a massive Fiat factory in Turin into a convention centre and venue for the city’s trade fair. His design for the Shard in London made it the tallest building in western Europe when it was completed in 2012 and it now towers above the historical skyline of London.

In 2013 Piano was appointed Senator for Life in the Italian Senate by President Giorgio Napolitano.

Piano currently lives in Paris with his wife, Milly. They have four children.

Piano's harbour development in his native Genoa

Travel tip:

The old harbour in Genoa, porto antico, is the ancient part of the port which served the city when the main access to it was from the sea. Renzo Piano redeveloped the area for public access, restoring the historic buildings and creating new landmarks such as the Aquarium and the Bolla (Sphere).

The 'armadillo shells' of the Auditorium Parco della Musica

Travel tip:

The Parco della Musica in Rome is a complex of music venues located in the part of Rome that hosted the 1960 summer Olympics. Piano designed it to have three theatres, covered with what New York Times critic Sam Lubell described as 'weathered, armadillo-like steel shells', and an outdoor theatre set in a park. During construction, excavations uncovered the foundations of a villa and an oil press dating from the sixth century BC. Piano adjusted his design to accommodate the archaeological remains and included a small museum to house the artefacts that were discovered.

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Aldo Serena - footballer

Azzurri striker left field in tears after penalty miss

Aldo Serena places the ball on the spot before
his fateful penalty kick against Argentina

Aldo Serena, one of the two Italian players who most felt the agony of defeat after the Azzurri suffered the pain of losing at the semi-final stage when the football World Cup last took place on home soil, was born on this day in 1960 in Montebelluna, a town in the Veneto.

The match that ended the host nation's participation in the Italia '90 tournament took place in Naples against an Argentina side that included the local hero, Diego Maradona. It was decided on penalties after finishing 1-1 over 120 minutes. 

Italy converted their opening three penalties, as did Argentina.  Then Roberto Donadoni’s shot was saved by the Argentina goalkeeper, Sergio Goycochea.  Up stepped Maradona, who scored, to the delight of many in the crowd who had divided loyalties.

Suddenly, everything was down to Aldo Serena, who could not afford to miss if Italy were to stay alive in a tournament in which they had played football at times that deserved to win.

Serena, the Internazionale striker, had been a fringe player for Italy throughout the tournament, picked only as a substitute, although he had scored in that capacity against Uruguay in the round of 16 – on his 30^th birthday.

Roberto Baggio consoles Aldo Serena (left) after
Italy's defeat in the semi-final

He had said since that he never wanted such responsibility, but Azeglio Vicini, the Italy coach, said there was no choice.  Gianluca Vialli and Giuseppe Giannini, who would have been chosen ahead of Serena, had both been substituted, while Toto Schillaci, who had emerged as Italy’s talisman during the tournament, had finished extra time with a groin injury, which Vicini felt might be too big an impediment. Serena had scored more than 100 goals during his Serie A career. He knew what it took to put the ball in the net.

Yet though hit a firm enough shot Goycochea read his intentions, diving to his left to smother the ball. Unlike Donadoni, who had dropped to his knees, head in hands, Serena remained upright.  Hands on hips, he tipped his head back and looked towards the heavens.  Goycochea ran past him, eager to join his team-mates as they celebrated their passage to the final.

Serena had not done too much wrong throughout the tournament so to be held responsible in some ways for the Azzurri demise was unfair. Twenty-four hours later, it would be the turn of Stuart Pearce and Chris Waddle to be Donadoni and Serena as England were knocked out by West Germany, also on penalties.

Serena with the trophy he won as
Serie A's top scorer in 1988-89

Yet at that moment it must have seemed there was no consolation or comfort available. The hopes of a nation had rested on his shoulders and he had not been able to deliver. No wonder he left the field in tears.

The moment should not have defined his career but it has tended to overshadow his achievements, which were not inconsiderable.  He won the Serie A title no fewer than four times, with Juventus (1985-86), Inter (88-89), and AC Milan (91-92 and 92-93), although his contribution to the two Milan championships was minimal because of injuries.

A powerful, athletic centre forward with good aerial ability and a fierce shot in his left foot, his best years were at Inter, where he was Serie A’s leading scorer in 1988-89 with 22 goals.  Yet fans of the nerazzurri found it hard to forgive him for joining their arch rivals AC Milan under Fabio Capello.

He retired in 1993 as the only player to have played for both Milan clubs and both Turin clubs, having spent part of the 1984-85 season on loan with Torino.  Nowadays he works as a TV pundit.

The church of Santa Maria in Colle
in Montebelluna

Travel tip:

Montebelluna is situated about 22km (14m) northwest of Treviso and about 67km (42m) from Venice on the way to the Valdobbiadene wine growing region famous for prosecco. A pleasant, orderly town, it is best known for its long tradition in the footwear industry, particularly the production of sports footwear, from ski boots to football boots.  There is a museum dedicated to the industry in Vicolo Zuccareda, not far from the church of Santa Maria in Colle. The international sportswear giant Nike has a factory nearby, while another, Fila, has a research facility based at Montebelluna.

Inside the Stadio San Paolo

Travel tip:

The football stadium in Naples, where the 1990 semi-final took, place is the Stadio San Paolo, built in the Fuorigrotta neighbourhood on the north side of the city and completed in 1959, more than 10 years after work began.  It is the third largest football ground in Italy with a capacity of 60,240. Diego Maradona played there for SC Napoli between 1984 and 1991, helping the club to the most successful period in their history, in which they won the Serie A title twice, the Coppa Italia and the UEFA Cup. The local council wanted to rename the ground Stadio Diego Maradona but Italian law prohibits the naming of a public building after any person who has not been dead at least 10 years.

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