Fabio Grosso - World Cup hero

Unspectacular career illuminated by unforgettable goal

Fabio Grosso at the 2006
World Cup finals

Fabio Grosso, the unlikely hero of Italy's victory in the 2006 World Cup in Germany, was born on this day in 1977 in Rome.

Selected for Marcello Lippi's squad for the Finals as cover for first-choice left-back Gianluca Zambrotta, Grosso eventually secured a place in Lippi's team and went on to score one of the most important goals in Italy's World Cup history as they beat the hosts, Germany, to reach the final.

He then secured his place in Azzurri folklore by scoring the winning penalty in the final against France as Italy lifted the trophy for the fourth time, equalling Brazil's record.

Yet Grosso arrived at the finals as a player who, if not an unknown, seldom attracted attention and had enjoyed a career that was respectable but certainly not eye-catching.

Five years before 2006,  he was playing in Serie C for Chieti, in the town in Abruzzo where he grew up, and only two and a half years before the tournament he left Serie A side Perugia to play for Palermo in Serie B.

Nonetheless, Palermo did win promotion to Serie A soon after Grosso arrived and at the same time he quietly established himself as Lippi's first choice at left back in the 2006 World Cup qualifying competition.

Yet his solid performances seldom making headlines.  Commentators have speculated that some Italian fans might not have even recognised him before 2006.

Even after the finals, when he earned a €5 million move to Internazionale, his career was notable for its fits and starts.

Marcello Lippi, Italy's coach

He won championships with Inter under Roberto Mancini and then in France with Olympique Lyon but at both clubs he quickly fell out of favour.  Inter sold him after one season, Lyon after two.

At international level, he retained Lippi's loyalty in the qualifying campaign for the 2010 World Cup but was not selected in the final squad for South Africa.

After Lyon, he joined Juventus, where he enjoyed a respectable first season but figured in fewer matches in his second campaign and was rarely selected after Antonio Conte took charge in the summer of 2011.  After making just two appearances in the 2011-12 campaign, he announced his retirement.

Yet thanks to the 2006 World Cup, his career will never be forgotten.  Picked for the opening group match after Zambrotta had been injured in training, he then benefited from right-back Cristian Zaccardo's poor form, which persuaded Lippi to switch Zambrotta from his normal position and play Grosso at left-back.

His first important contribution came in the round-of-16 match against Australia, when he won a disputed penalty in stoppage time that enabled Italy to scrape into the quarter-finals.

Relieve Fabio Grosso's goal against Germany and Italy's second moments later

The semi-final goal in Dortmund that made him a star came with a penalty shoot-out just two minutes away after a match that had been goalless but full of dramatic excitement, with Germany desperate to reach the Final in their own country.

It stemmed from a corner on the right that found its way to playmaker Andrea Pirlo on the edge of the penalty area.  Pirlo kept the ball at his feet before he spotted Grosso in a yard of space inside the box to the right, threading the ball to him between two defenders.

Grosso admitted to half closing his eyes as he swung his left foot, aiming at where he hoped the far corner of the goal might be.  His guesswork and delivery could not have been better, the ball curling inside the post just out of the reach of goalkeeper Jens Lehmann's dive.

Andrea Pirlo

Grosso ran away, repeatedly shouting 'Non ci credo' - 'I don't believe it' - in a celebration reminiscent of Marco Tardelli after his goal in the 1982 final in Spain, before teammates piled on top of him.  Moments later, Alessandro Del Piero scored Italy's second goal on a break from defence as Germany threw all their players forward in search of an equaliser.

The quality of Grosso's shot took some fans by surprise but he had been a goalscoring winger in his early career, scoring 47 times in 108 games for Renato Curi Angolana in regional football in Abruzzo.  Only when he had joined Perugia was he converted to a full back.

It impressed Lippi enough to name him as the man to take the often crucial fifth penalty, and after David Trezeguet's miss for France gave Grosso the chance to win the match and the trophy for Italy, he kept his cool and duly scored, to be the man of the moment for the second time.

Married with two children, Grosso returned to Juventus in 2014 to join the coaching staff.  He is currently in charge of the Primavera (Under-20s) team, having turned down the chance to coach Crotone in Serie A earlier this year.

Travel tip:

Chieti is among the most historic Italian cities, supposedly founded in 1181BC by the Homeric Greek hero Achilles. Among its main sights are a Gothic Cathedral, rebuilt after earthquake damage in the 18th century on the sight of a church that dates back to the 11th century, and the Villa Comunale, a neo-classical palace of the 19th century that is home to the National Archaeological Museum of Abruzzo.

The Fontana Maggiore in Perugia's Piazza IV Novembre

Travel tip:

Perugia, an ancient city that sits on a high hilltop midway between Rome and Florence, has a history that goes back to the Etruscan times, when it was one of the most powerful cities of the period.  It is also a university town with a long history, the University of Perugia having been founded in 1308.  The presence of the University for Foreigners and a number of smaller colleges gives Perugia a student population of more than 40,000.  The centre of the city, Piazza IV Novembre, has an interesting medieval fountain, the Fontana Maggiore, which was sculpted by Nicolo and Giovanni Pisano.

More reading:

1990 World Cup: Italy's semi-final heartbreak on home soil

1982 World Cup: Paolo Rossi's hat-trick in classic victory over Brazil

1970 World Cup: Gianni Rivera - the midfield maestro who became a politician

Also on this day:

1873: The death of astronomer Caterina Scarpellini

1907: The birth of novelist Alberto Moravia

1913: The birth of composer Mario Nascimbene

1925: The birth of oncologist Umberto Veronesi

1941: The birth of actress Laura Antonelli

1955: The birth of World Cup winner Alessandro Altobelli

(Picture credits: Fabio Grosso by David Ruddell; Marcello Lippi by Henry Flower; Fontana Maggiore by Alex Barrow; all via Wikimedia Commons)

Home

Jacopo Sansovino – architect

Death of the designer praised by Palladio

A portrait of Sansovino by Tintoretto, currently
 housed in the Uffizi Gallery in Florence

Jacopo d’Antonio Sansovino, the sculptor and architect renowned for his works around Piazza San Marco, died on this day in 1570 in Venice.

He designed the Libreria Sansoviniana in the Piazzetta, which was later praised by the architect Andrea Palladio as ‘the finest building erected since antiquity’.

Sansovino had been born Jacopo Tatti in 1486 in Florence and was apprenticed to the sculptor Andrea Sansovino, whose surname he subsequently adopted.

He was commissioned to make a marble sculpture of St James for the Duomo and a Bacchus, which is now in the Bargello in Florence.

However, his designs for sculptures to adorn the façade of the Church of San Lorenzo were rejected by Michelangelo, who was in charge of the scheme.

In 1529 Sansovino became chief architect to the Procurators of San Marco, making him one of the most influential artists in Venice.

The Palazzo Corner della Ca'Grande was the first
building in Venice designed by Sansovino

His first Venetian building was the Palazzo Corner della Ca’ Grande, a huge classical palace for one of the richest families in Venice.

Sansovino designed the Loggetta and its sculptures adjoining the Campanile and statues for the Basilica of San Marco. He also helped rebuild many of the churches and palaces in Venice.

His masterpiece is considered to be the library building in the Piazzetta, which houses the national library of San Marco, the Biblioteca Marciana.

Construction began in 1537 opposite the Doge’s palace and it became one of the most richly decorated Renaissance structures in Venice, surmounted by statues of mythological gods.

During the construction, the roof vaulting collapsed and at the time Sansovino was blamed and imprisoned. He was freed only after appeals from eminent people in Venice, including the artist Titian.

After Sansovino’s death in Venice in 1570 he was buried in St Mark’s Basilica.

The Libreria Sansoviniana, which houses the Biblioteca
Nazionale Marciana, is considered Sansovino's masterpiece

Travel tip:

The National Library of St Mark’s, the Biblioteca Nazionale Marciana, is housed in the Renaissance building designed by Sansovino opposite the Doge’s Palace in the Piazzetta. It is one of the earliest surviving public manuscript depositories in the country holding one of the greatest collections of classical texts in the world. The library is named after Saint Mark, the patron saint of Venice. One of the first librarians was poet and scholar Pietro Bembo, who had earlier written beautiful love letters to Lucrezia Borgia while they were having an affair.

Travel tip:

Sansovino was buried in the beautifully decorated Baptistery of Saint Mark’s near the altar. The Baptistery was built on to the southern end of the church in the first half of the 14th century. In the centre of the room stands a baptismal font in marble and bronze, which was designed by Sansovino.

More reading:

The worldwide influence of the Renaissance giant Titian

Andrea Palladio - the world's favourite architect

The day the Campanile of St Mark's collapsed

Also on this day:

1964: The birth of footballer and manager Roberto Mancini

(Picture credits: Palazzo Corner della Ca'Grande and Libreria Sansoviniana both by Wolfgang Moroder via Wikimedia Commons)


Home

Charles Forte - businessman and hotelier

Multi-billion pound empire started with a single café

Baron Forte of Ripley

Businessman Charles Forte - later Sir Charles and then Baron Forte of Ripley - was born Carmine Forte in the hamlet of Mortale in the Frosinone province of southern Lazio on this day in 1908.

Forte was most famous for his hotels empire, which once numbered more than 800 properties ranging from Travelodge motels to the high-end luxury of the Grosvenor House in London and the George V in Paris.

Starting with a single milk bar in London, opened in 1935, he grew a business that became so vast that, when it changed hands 61 years later, it was valued at £3.9 billion.

Charles Forte was brought up largely in Scotland, where his family emigrated in 1911 after his father, Rocco, decided to follow the lead of his brother by abandoning farming in his impoverished homeland to try his luck in the catering business abroad.

Rocco ran a café and ice cream parlour in Alloa, a town in central Scotland about an hour's drive north-east of Glasgow and a similar distance to the north-west of Edinburgh.

Charles went to school in Alloa and nearby Dumfries before completing his education at the Mamiani High School in Rome.  When he returned, the family had relocated to Weston-super-Mare in Somerset.

The famous Forte logo

He cut his catering teeth managing The Venetian Lounge, a café in Brighton owned by a cousin, before setting up a first business of his own, the Meadow Milk Bar, in Upper Regent Street, in central London, in 1935.  Forte broke new ground by serving meals as well as the usual coffee bar fare,.

Ambitious to expand, his fledgling company Strand Milk Bars had seven outlets by the outbreak of the Second World War, which presented Forte with a problem when Italy joined in on the side of Germany.  Although he had applied to become a British citizen, the process had not been completed and he found himself arrested and taken to an internment camp in the Isle of Man as a foreign national.

Happily, he was released after only three months and was co-opted on to a Ministry of Food committee to advise on rationing.

His cafés remained open throughout the War, during which he married Irene Chierico, an English girl with Venetian roots who would be his partner for life.  They had a son, Rocco, in 1945, and went on to have six children, all girls apart from the first.

The Café Royal in London's Regent Street
was acquired by Charles Forte in the 1950s

Adding more properties to his café-restaurant chain, including the Rainbow Corner, a former US servicemen's centre in Shaftesbury Avenue, and the Criterion in Piccadilly Circus, Forte became so successful he was able to buy two adjoining houses in Hampstead in the early 1950s, which enabled his extended family to join him in London.

The business was now operating as Forte Holdings Ltd and seemed to be moving in an upmarket direction when he added the prestigious Café Royal and Quaglino's to his portfolio.

But he saw more opportunities in diversifying his interests, acquiring the rights to open the first catering facility at Heathrow Airport and giving Britain its first motorway service station at Newport Pagnall on the M1 in 1959.

In the meantime, he had moved into the luxury hotel market by buying the historic Waldorf Hotel in London's Aldwych, the first of more than 800 hotels his business would own over the next 30 years, including the exclusive Hôtel George V, just off the Champs Élysees in Paris.

It was the merger of Forte Holdings with the Trust Houses Group in 1970 that turned Forte's business empire into a multi-million pound concern, creating the Trust House Forte brand, which owned the Little Chef and Happy Eater roadside restaurants, the Crest, Forte Grand, Travelodge and Posthouse hotels and numerous other retail and leisure concerns.

London's iconic Waldorf Hotel in Aldwych was the first
of more than 800 hotels ultimately owned by Forte

Forte had a self-deprecating sense of humour, joking that he should be called "the shortest Knight of the year" when he became Sir Charles Forte in 1970, making reference to his diminutive stature - he was only 5ft 4ins tall.

Yet he was sensitive about how British society viewed him.  Sir Hugh Wontner, who held firm against Forte's long battle to buy the Savoy Hotel in the 1980s, publicly cast doubt on his suitability to run such an institution and the City never stopped referring to him as "the milk bar king." The restaurant guru Egon Ronay lambasted him for the quality of the food at his motorway service areas.

However, the string of high-end hotels his Forte Group ran under the Forte Grand and Exclusive Hotels by Forte brands meant he could play host to the richest and best-connected clients and he was delighted to accept a peerage offered to him in 1982 by prime minister Margaret Thatcher, whom he idolised.

With a house in Belgravia, London and a mansion at Ripley in Surrey, Forte retired in 1993 and was dismayed when his son, Rocco, whom he placed in control of his company, was unable to resist a £3.9 billion hostile takeover bid from the media and leisure company Granada, which effectively meant his life's work had been lost.

However, he lived to see Rocco build up a new luxury hotel business with the help of his sister Olga - Charles and Irene's second child - who is known as Olga Polizzi, having been married to the late Count Alessandro Polizzi.  She is now married to the author William Shawcross.

Charles Forte would periodically return to his roots in Mortale, which was subsequently renamed Monforte in his family's honour, and restored the house where his family once lived. He died in 2007 at his Belgravia home, aged 98, and was laid to rest in West Hampstead Cemetery.

The landscape around Forte's home village of Monforte

Travel tip:

Casalattico, the municipality of which Monforte is part, is home to an Irish festival each summer, celebrating the significant number of local families that moved to Ireland in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. It is thought that up to 8,000 Irish-Italians have ancestors from Casalattico and nearby Picinisco.


Travel tip:

Frosinone is part of the area known as Ciociaria, which took its name from the primitive footwear - cioce - once favoured by local people, which consisted of a large leather sole and long straps that were tied around the legs up to the knee.  It first appeared on maps at the time of the Papal States.  Today it stages numerous food fairs, entertainment and music events and celebrates many rural, religious and country traditions.

More reading:

How Ferrero and Nutella grew from a small bakery in Alba

Salvatore Ferragamo - the humble Neapolitan shoemaker who became the favourite of the stars

Battista Pininfarina - the 'smallest brother' who became Italy's greatest car designer

Also on this day:

1963: The death of coloratura soprano Amelita Galli-Curci


(Pictures: Café Royal by Christine Matthews; Waldorf Hotel by Edward; Area around Monforte by Andicat; all via Wikimedia Commons)


Home

Bruno Tonioli - dance show judge

Dancer and choreographer is star of Strictly Come Dancing

Strictly Come Dancing judge Bruno Tonioli

Dancer, choreographer and television dance show judge Bruno Tonioli was born on this day in 1955 in Ferrara in north-east Italy.

Tonioli is one of the judging panel of Strictly Come Dancing on British TV and on its US equivalent Dancing With the Stars, which requires him to divide his time between London and New York when seasons overlap.

He began his showbusiness career in the 1980s as a member of the Paris-based dance company La Grande Eugène before moving into the music industry as a choreographer.

Among the artists he has worked with are Tina Turner, Sting, Elton John, the Rolling Stones, Freddie Mercury, Sinitta, Boy George, Dead or Alive, and Duran Duran.

Tonioli has also worked on numerous films and television shows including Little Voice, The Gathering Storm, Dancin' thru the Dark and Enigma.

He also has a number of acting credits, including the role of Peppino, manservant to Michael Gambon's Oscar Wilde in the BBC production Oscar.  Tonioli appeared as himself in the movie version of the BBC comedy Absolutely Fabulous.

Renowned for his flamboyantly wild gestures and amusingly extravagant comments, Tonioli has been a member of the Strictly Come Dancing team since the show's launch in 2004 and is now into his 14th series alongside fellow ever-presents Len Goodman and Craig Revel-Horwood.  He was hired to judge on Dancing With the Stars when that show launched in 2005.

Bruno Tonioli is renowned for his wild gestures

The son of a bus driver, Werther Tonioli, and a seamstress mother, Fulvia, Tonioli was 12 before the family could afford their own apartment in Ferrara. Until then they had lived with his father's parents.

He knew from an early age that he was gay, although he said in a newspaper interview in 2005 that the subject of his sexuality was never discussed at home.  He believes his parents, who were strict Catholics, would not have wanted to contemplate the possibility at the time, although not out of shame but for fear of how others might judge him.

He said he was bullied and threatened at school but fought back by growing his hair long, smoking expensive cigarettes, wearing the latest in cool clothes and becoming friends with the best-looking girls among his peer group, after which he became popular and acceptable.

Tonioli's love of the theatre began when he the film version of the musical Cabaret, starring Liza Minnelli, came to Ferrara in 1972.  He saw it eight times and realised he wanted dance to be his career. Others boys of his age wanted to play football but he was much more interested in theatre and the arts.

His parents were keen for him to find a steady job, perhaps in a bank.  Instead, he left for Rome to enrol at ballet school, leaving Italy for Paris at the age of 18.  Both his parents are now dead but he says he was reconciled with them long before they passed away.

From Paris he moved to London, joining another dance company and finding work in television and the West End as a choreographer.  The English capital has been his home almost ever since.

The Palazzo dei Diamanti in Ferrara

Travel tip:

Apart from the impressively well preserved Castello Estense right at the heart of the city, Ferrara - situated midway between Bologna and Venice in Emilia-Romagna - has many notable architectural gems, including many palaces from the 14th and 15th centuries.  Among them is the striking Palazzo dei Diamanti, so-called because the stone blocks of its facade are cut into the shape of diamonds. The palace holds the National Picture Gallery, which houses many works from the  masters of the 16th-century School of Ferrara, including Lorenzo Costa, Dosso Dossi, Girolamo da Carpi and Benvenuto Tisi.

Travel tip:

Rome's prestigious ballet school of the Teatro dell'Opera di Roma was established in 1928 and is one of the oldest and most respected vocational schools in Italy. It can be found in Via Ozieri in a charming cottage set in a secluded and quiet street in the San Giovanni neighbourhood to the south-east of the city, near the ruins of the Felice Aqueduct. Director Luchino Visconti in 1951 chose it as the location for shooting some scenes of his film Beautiful, starring the Roman actress Anna Magnani.


Books: Bruno: My Story, by Bruno Tonioli (Headline)

More reading:

Antonio Carluccio - chef and restaurateur who settled in London

How Luca Zingaretti found fame as TV detective Montalbano

Pierina Legnani - Italian dancer who conquered St Petersburg

Also on this day:

1881: The Birth of Angelo Roncalli, the Bergamo farmer's son who became Pope John XXIII

(Picture credits: Bruno Tonioli pictures from YouTube; Palazzo dei Diamante by Sansa55 via Wikimedia Commons)

Home