Giovanni Trapattoni - football coach

His seven Serie A titles is unequalled achievement

Giovanni Trapattoni during his
time as Juventus coach

Giovanni Trapattoni, the former Juventus and Internazionale coach who is one of only four coaches to have won the principal league titles of four different European countries, was born on this day in 1939 in Cusano Milanino, a suburb on the northern perimeter of Milan.

The most successful club coach in the history of Serie A, he won seven titles, six with Juventus and one with Inter.  His nearest challengers in terms of most Italian domestic championships are Fabio Capello and Marcello Lippi, each of whom has five Scudetti to his name.

In addition, Trapattoni has also won the German Bundesliga with Bayern Munich, the Portuguese Primeira Liga with Benfica and the Austrian Bundesliga with Red Bull Salzburg, with whom he secured his 10th league title all told in 2007.

Current Manchester United boss Jose Mourinho is among the other three managers to have won titles in four countries.  He has been successful in Portugal, England, Italy and Spain.

Alongside former Bayern Munich coach Udo Lattek, Trapattoni is the only coach to have won all three major European club competitions - the European Cup, the UEFA Cup and the now defunct European Cup-Winners' Cup - and the only one to do it with the same club.  With Juventus, he also won the European Super Cup and the Intercontinental Cup.

During a career in the dugout that spanned four decades, Trapattoni - often referred to as 'Il Trap' or simply 'Trap' -  was in charge at nine different clubs, including five in Italy.  He has also tasted international management twice, with the Italian national side and with the Republic of Ireland.

Trapattoni (right) and his assistant Marco Tardelli on the
bench with the Republic of Ireland

He built his achievements around a method that combined elements of 'catenaccio' - for many years the defensive foundation of Italy's best teams - and the 'total football' pioneered by the Dutch coach Rinus Michels in the 1970s. His biggest regret was that he could not translate it to success with the Azzurri after he succeeded Dino Zoff as Italy coach in 2000.

Trapattoni's team qualified unbeaten for the 2002 World Cup finals in Japan and South Korea but in the finals were knocked out in the round of 16 in controversial circumstances by the co-hosts, South Korea, when a number of decisions by Ecuadorian referee Byron Moreno went against Italy, leading many Italian commentators and Trapattoni himself to suspect a conspiracy to keep the Koreans in the tournament.

He also led them to the finals of Euro 2004 but the Azzurri this time failed to survive the group stage, their fate sealed when the final group match, between Denmark and Sweden, ended in a draw, which resulted in Italy's elimination. Trapattoni was replaced by Lippi as coach soon afterwards.

Trapattoni entered coaching after a massively successful playing career with AC Milan.

Trapattoni with goalkeeper Fabio Cudicini and coach
Nereo Rocco after the 1968 Cup-Winners' Cup Final

A central defender or defensive midfielder in the Milan team in which Gianni Rivera was creative star, Trapattoni won two Serie A titles and two European Cups during his 12 years with the rossoneri, also winning the Cup-Winners' Cup, the European Super Cup and the Intercontinental Cup.

Apart from one season with Varese at the end of his career, he played only for AC Milan. It was there that he began life as a coach, looking after the youth team and, for one season, the senior team before Juventus took him to Turin, where he enjoyed immediate success, leading his new team to the Serie A title in his first year in charge.

After four titles in his first six seasons with Juve, he took the bianconeri to the European Cup final in 1983, where they lost to Hamburg.  Two years later, he won the European Cup, although the victory over reigning champions Liverpool in Brussels was rendered hollow by the crowd violence at the Heysel Stadium, where 39 fans - mainly Italians - were killed when a wall collapsed.

Following a decade with Juve that brought six Serie A titles, two Coppe Italia and all the European glory, Trapattoni moved to Inter, where he won his seventh Serie A crown, then back to Juve, adding the 1993 UEFA Cup to his long list of silverware, before venturing abroad for the first time, with Bayern Munich.

Giovanni Trapattoni

He left Munich after just one season to become coach at Cagliari, where he was sacked for the first time in his career in 1996, before a triumphant second spell in Germany, in which he led Munich to the Bundesliga title in 1997.  Next stop was Fiorentina, whom he took into the Champions League.

After his disappointing four years in charge of the national side, Trapattoni's next five seasons took him to Benfica, Stuttgart and Salzburg.  After winning his ninth and 10th national titles, he returned to international football in slightly unexpected circumstances, taking over as coach of the Republic of Ireland team in 2008.

His biggest achievement with the Irish was qualification for the Euro 2012, hosted by Poland and Ukraine, although in some ways it was small consolation for failing to reach the World Cup finals in 2010, when Ireland earned a play-off against France only to be beaten by a contentious goal from William Gallas in the second leg in Paris after Thierry Henry handled the ball twice in the build-up.

Away from football, Trapattoni, who came from a working class background, has been married for 53 years to Paola. They have two children and a number of grandchildren.

A religious man, he is a follower of the Catholic institution Opus Dei and has been known to sprinkle holy water on the field before a game.  In 2010, he realised a lifetime's ambition by coaching the Vatican City team for a match against an Italian police team.

Cusano Milanino, notable for its leafy thoroughfares, is
served by Milan's extensive tram network

Travel tip:

Although the history of the town of Cusano goes back to the fourth century, the 20th century brought a change in its character due to the development of the garden city of Milanino, the first to be built in Italy along the lines of those that began to appear in England at the end of the 19th century. With the support of a co-operative movement founded by Luigi Buffoli, Milanino was created to meet the housing needs of the middle class, consisting of elegant villas and cottages, in Art Nouveau and eclectic styles, interspersed with numerous green spaces, which are a particular rarity in the urbanised northern outskirts of Milan. The area became known as Cusano Milanino in 1915.

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Milan's stunning Gothic cathedral

Travel tip:

Milan, where Trapattoni spent almost his entire playing career, is to many a more appropriate city to be the capital of Italy than Rome.  The global capital of fashion and design, it is also home to Italy's stock exchange, a financial hub and a city with a wealth of culture and history. The striking Gothic Duomo di Milano is one of the finest cathedrals in Europe, there are numerous prestigious art galleries and the Santa Maria delle Grazie convent houses Leonardo da Vinci’s mural The Last Supper.  The city has one of the world's most important opera houses in Teatro alla Scala and two of Europe's leading football clubs in AC Milan, for whom Trapattoni played and coached, and Internazionale, where he coached.

More reading:

Marcello Lippi - Italy's 2006 World Cup winning coach

How Gianni Rivera moved from football into politics

Altafini, 1963, and Italy's first taste of European Cup glory

Also on this day:

1826: The birth of investor Innocenzo Manzetti

1861: The birth of the Kingdom of Italy

1925: The birth of acclaimed actor Gabriele Ferzetti

(Pic credits: Trapattoni and Tardelli from Michael Kranewitter/FIFA; 3rd Trapattoni pic by soccer.ru; tram by Moliva Milan Cathedral by Steffen Schmitz; all via Wikimedia Commons)

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Bernardo Bertolucci - film director

Caused outrage with Last Tango in Paris

Bernardo Bertolucci

The controversial film maker Bernardo Bertolucci was born on this day in 1940 in Parma.

Bertolucci won an Oscar for best director as The Last Emperor picked up an impressive nine Academy Awards in 1988 but tends to be remembered more for the furore that surrounded his 1972 movie Last Tango in Paris.

Last Tango in Paris, starring Marlon Brando and Maria Schneider, caused outrage for its portrayal of sexual violence and emotional turmoil and was banned in Italy.

Although the storm died down over time, it blew up again in 2007 when Schneider, who was only 19 when the film was shot, claimed she felt violated after one particularly graphic scene because she had not been told everything that would happen.  Schneider died from cancer in 2011.

The controversy has overshadowed what has otherwise been an outstanding career, Bertolucci's movies placing him in the company of Federico Fellini, Michelangelo Antonioni, Luchino Visconti and Franco Zeffirelli among the greatest Italian directors of all time.

As a young man, Bertolucci wanted to become a poet, inspired by his father, Attilio Bertolucci, who was a poet as well as an art historian.

He moved to Rome to study modern literature at Sapienza University yet it was his father's part-time occupation as a film critic that was to shape his career.

Marlon Brando in a scene from Last Tango in Paris

He had helped Pier Paolo Pasolini find a publisher for his first novel and Pasolini in turn took on Bernardo as his first assistant when he began his film directing career with Accattone in 1961.  It was not long afterwards that Bertolucci quit university and at the age of 22, in 1962, he directed his first movie, La commare secca, with a screenplay by Pasolini and produced by Tonino Cervi.

Last Tango came 10 years later, by which time Bertolucci was beginning to acquire a reputation as a director of talent, having attracted particular acclaim for his 1970 film, The Conformist, based on a novel by Alberto Moravia.

It was Last Tango that thrust him into the spotlight, however.  Though there was an Oscar nomination, it was overshadowed by the backlash of moral outrage.  The Italian authorities, as well as ordering initially that all copies of the film should be destroyed - an appeal court later allowed three to be saved - launched a prosecution for obscenity against Bertolucci, who was given a four-month suspended jail sentence and a five-year revoking of his civil rights.

Nonetheless, his career moved to another level.  He made his comeback in 1976 with 1900, an epic that ran to five hours and 17 minutes in its uncut version, telling the story of two men from different ends of the social spectrum in Bertolucci's native Emilia-Romagna, set against the background of political turmoil in Italy in the first half of the 20th century.  Boasting a cast that include Robert De Niro, Gérard Depardieu, Donald Sutherland and Burt Lancaster, 1900 was hailed as a masterpiece.

A publicity poster for Bertolucci's
acclaimed 1976 epic tale, 1900

More success followed with La Luna and Tragedy of a Ridiculous Man before The Last Emperor, his British-Italian biographical film about Puyi, the last emperor of China before the People's Republic of China imposed communist rule.  The first western feature film for which the producers were authorized to film in the Forbidden City in Beijing, it won nine Academy Awards, including best picture and Bertolucci's best director.   The Last Emperor marked the beginning of his working relationship with the British producer, Jeremy Thomas.

Although hampered by serious back problems that now mean he is increasingly wheelchair-bound, Bertolucci continued to work into his 70s.  In 2007, he received the Golden Lion Award at the Venice Film Festival for his life's work, and in 2011 the Palme d'Or at the Cannes Film Festival.

Married to Clare Peploe, a writer who worked on the screenplay of Antonioni's 1970 classic Zabriskie Point, Bertolucci is a former supporter of the Italian Communist Party.  He was awarded a Star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame at 6925 Hollywood Boulevard in Hollywood, California on November 19, 2013.

Parma's cathedral and octagonal baptistery

Travel tip:

Bertolucci's home city of Parma suffers a little from living in the shadow of Modena and Bologna, both of which have achieved greater fame.  Yet the home of prosciutto di Parma and parmigiano reggiano is an elegantly wealthy city with a virtually car free centre, a host of fine churches - including the Romanesque cathedral and baptistery and the Sanctuary of Santa Maria della Steccata - and some beautiful palaces.

Travel tip

Emilia-Romagna is one of the wealthiest regions in Europe, let alone Italy. Its capital, Bologna, is the home of the University of Bologna, the oldest university in the world, while the region is a major centre for food and car production. It is the home of companies such as Ferrari, Lamborghini, Maserati, Pagani, De Tomaso and Ducati, and a thriving tourist trade based around the popular coastal resorts of Cervia, Cesenatico, Rimini and Riccione.

More reading:

The brilliant legacy of Federico Fellini

How Shakespeare adaptations made Zeffirelli a household name

Why Francesco Rosi can be counted among Italian cinema's greats

Also on this day:

1886: The birth of Emilio Lunghi, Italy's first Olympic medallist

1978: The terrorist kidnapping of former prime minister Aldo Moro


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Giuseppe Mezzofanti - hyperpolyglot

Roman Catholic Cardinal could speak 38 languages

A portrait of Giuseppe Mezzofanti painted
in around 1838 in Bologna

The death occurred in Rome on this day in 1849 of Cardinal Giuseppe Caspar Mezzofanti, a prodigiously talented academic renowned for his command of multiple foreign languages.

Defined as a hyperpolyglot - someone who is fluent in six languages or more - Mezzofanti is said to have full command of at least 38.

The majority were European, Mediterranean or Middle Eastern languages - mainstream and regional - but he was also said to be fluent in Chinese languages, Russian, plus Hindi and Gujarati.

His fame was such that he became something of an international celebrity, although he never actually left Italy, living the early part of his life in his home city of Bologna, before moving to Rome. 

Visiting dignitaries from all over the world would ask to be introduced to him, ready to be awestruck as he slipped effortlessly into their native tongue.

There is an abundance of stories illustrating his extraordinary gift.  As a boy, working in the workshop in Bologna of his father, Francis, a carpenter, he is said to have overheard from a neighbouring building a priest giving lessons in Latin and Greek and later recalled every word, despite never having seen a Latin or Greek book.

The library at Bologna University is named after Mezzofanti

In another famous anecdote, it is said that Pope Gregory XVI once arranged an audience with Mezzofanti for a group of international students, who asked questions of the Cardinal in their own languages, often speaking over each other, and reacted with amazement as he responded to each student in turn, switching from one language to another with barely a pause.

One of his grimmer duties as a priest was to listen to the confessions of foreign criminals sentenced to death and another story has it that, on a rare occasion when he found himself with no knowledge of the native tongue of two prisoners condemned for piracy, he asked for a stay of execution for the pair and returned the following day able to understand their every word and offer words of consolation in return.

For all his admirers, Mezzofanti has attracted just as many sceptics, particularly in recent years, with some modern experts in linguistics writing off his revered talents as a myth.

It has been argued that 19th-century linguists would have been described as fluent on the strength of their reading and translating, whereas the definition of fluency today requires the ability to communicate orally to a very high standard.

The beautiful Sistine Hall of the Vatican Library

Mezzofanti's doubters suggest that the nature of exchanges between a Cardinal and foreign dignitaries in his time would have been fairly superficial, consisting of diplomatic formalities and not much more.  They argue that Mezzofanti would rarely have been required to stretch himself beyond basic vocabulary.

Furthermore, they points to studies that suggest no hyperpolyglot can maintain more than seven or eight languages to a high standard at any one time because the limitations of working memory.

However, there is some evidence that hyperpolyglots are biologically or genetically predisposed to be extraordinary feats of language assimilation because the areas of their brain responsible for such skills are more developed than normal.

It has also been suggested that polyglots are better at grasping languages because of an ability to identify patterns in a language based on knowledge gleaned from other languages.

Mezzofanti was certainly a gifted individual with a flair for learning.

He was appointed Professor of Arabic at the University of Bologna at the age of just 24 and was ordained as a priest in the same year.

A map from 1799 showing the area of the
Cisalpine Republic (in green)

Sacked by the University after refusing to swear allegiance to Napoleon's Cisalpine Republic, he returned after its fall to be assistant librarian of the Institute of Bologna, and soon afterwards was reinstated as professor of Oriental languages and of Greek.

Mezzofanti stayed in that post for the most part until he left Bologna to go to Rome in 1831 as a member of the Congregation for the Propagation of the Faith (Congregatio de Propaganda Fide), the Catholic Church's governing body for missionary activities.  In Rome he was created a Cardinal.

In 1833, he succeeded Angelo Mai as Custodian-in-Chief of the Vatican Library. 

Capable of remembering entire texts after one reading, he is said to have been able to spend many more hours in study than the average person because he could get by on only three hours' sleep per night.

He is said to have kept his language skills fresh by aiming to spend at least some time each day thinking in each of his languages.

Travel tip:

Via Malcontenti, where Mezzofanti was born and grew up, is less than a kilometre to the north of the centre of Bologna, and what remains of it runs parallel with the much more modern Via dell'Indipendenza.  It used to begin at Piazza San Pietro, the site of the cathedral of the same name, but the only stretch in existence today runs from Via Marsala to Via Augusto Righi.

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One of the oldest documents in the Vatican Library is the
Codex Vaticanus, a fourth century text of the Greek bible

Travel tip:

Formally established in 1475, the Vatican Library, where Mezzofanti worked until his death at the age of 74, it is one of the oldest libraries in the world and contains one of the most significant collections of historical texts. It contains 1.1 million books, as well as 75,000 handwritten codices. A research library for history, law, philosophy, science and theology, the Vatican Library is open to anyone who can document their qualifications and research needs.  In March, 2014, the Vatican Library began the process of digitising its collection of manuscripts to be made available online, which was expected to take at least four years. Restoration of the library between 2007 and 2010 cost £7.5 million.

More reading:

Agostini Richelmy - the Cardinal who fought for Garibaldi

Giovanni Pico della Mirandola - mystery death of Renaissance intellectual

How Vatican Library became a haven for Mussolini opponent Alcide de Gasperi

Also on this day:

44BC - The murder of Julius Caesar

1673: The death of flamboyant painter Salvator Rosa

1738: The birth of criminal law philosopher Cesare Beccaria

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Giovanni Schiaparelli - astronomer

Discoveries sparked belief there was life on Mars

Giovanni Schiaparelli, in a photograph taken
in Milan in the 1870s

The astronomer Giovanni Schiaparelli, whose observations in the late 19th century gave rise to decades of popular speculation about possible life on Mars, was born on this day in 1835 in Savigliano, about 60km (37 miles) south of Turin.

Schiaparelli worked for more than 40 years at the Brera Observatory in Milan, most of that time as its director.

It was in 1877 that he made the observations that were to cause so much excitement, a year notable for a particularly favourable 'opposition' of Mars, when Mars, Earth and the Sun all line up so that Mars and the Sun are on directly opposite sides of Earth, making the surface of Mars easier to see.

Oppositions occur every two years or so but because the orbit of Mars is more elliptical than Earth's there are points at which it is much closer to the Sun than at others.  An opposition that coincides with one of these points is much rarer, probably taking place only once in a lifetime, if that.

Schiaparelli was deeply fascinated with Mars and knew that this opposition gave him the opportunity of his lifetime to make a detailed survey of the red planet and made every effort to ensure his vision and his senses were as sharp as they could be when he put his eye to the telescope.

Schiaparelli's map of the surface of Mars

In his memoirs, he noted that he avoided "everything which could affect the nervous system, from narcotics to alcohol, and especially... coffee, which I found to be exceedingly prejudicial to the accuracy of observation."

In previous research, Schiaparelli had noted the appearance of 'seas' and 'continents' but during the 1877 opposition he was convinced he could see a network of links between his so-called 'seas' which he described as "canali".

Schiaparelli used the word to indicate "channels" but in the reports of his findings in the English language press, particularly in the United Kingdom and the United States, the word was translated as "canals".

Coming soon after the construction of the Suez Canal, a a major feat of engineering on Earth, the possibility that Mars had a system of such artificially constructed waterways caused a frenzy of excitement, giving rise to much hypothesis and speculation about there being intelligent life on the planet.

Schiaparelli in a lithograph by Achille Beltrame in
 the magazine La Domenica del Corriere

Among the most enthusiastic supporters of this theory was the American astronomer Percival Lowell, who dedicated much of his life and personal fortune to building on Schiaparelli's work, convinced he could prove that life on Mars did exist.

Later, notably as a result of the work of another Italian astronomer, Vincenzo Cerulli, astronomers developed a consensus that the "canals" were an optical illusion, although the public hung on to the notion of life on Mars until halfway through the 20th century. In 1938, a radio adaptation in the United States of the HG Wells novel, The War of the Worlds, which included simulated news bulletins, caused many listeners to believe that an invasion of Earth by Martians was actually taking place.

The canal hypothesis was not finally laid to rest until spaceflights began in the 1960s and telescopes much more powerful than were available to Schiaparelli and his contemporaries confirmed that his canals simply did not exist.

At the time of the discovery, though, Schiaparelli had been convinced what he was seeing was real and produced detailed maps, showing his 'seas', land masses and numerous channels, that created an image of the surface of Mars that resembled the lagoon and islands of Venice.

Schiaparelli's grave at the Monumental Cemetery in Milan

Of his channels, he wrote: "It is [as] impossible to doubt their existence as that of the Rhine on the surface of the Earth."

His hypothesis was that Mars was a planet, like Earth, with seasons and that water was produced by the melting of a polar ice cap.  The system of channels, he suggested, carried this water to other parts of the planet, providing irrigation in the absence of rain. Although he felt these were more likely to have developed naturally, he did not rule out the possibility that some were created artificially.

Educated at the University of Turin, Schiaparelli worked at the Pulkovo Observatory near St Petersburg in Russia from 1859 to 1860 before being appointed to the staff of the Brera Observatory. He was also a senator of the Kingdom of Italy. The fashion designer Elsa Schiaparelli was his niece.

He died in Milan in 1910 at the age of 75. He is buried at the city's Monumental Cemetery.

The Piazza Santarosa in Savigliano

Travel tip:

Savigliano is a town of some 21,000 people with an industrial heritage based around its iron foundries and locomotive works, but also has silk manufacturers and sugar factories. The feature of the historic centre is the picturesque Piazza Santarosa, surrounded by pleasant arcades. Rail enthusiasts might like the Museo Ferroviario Piemontese, in Via Coloira, which has a collection of steam, diesel and electric locomotives. It is open to the public on Saturday and Sunday all year round and also on Thursdays in the summer.  For more details visit www.museoferroviariopiemontese.it

The Brera Observatory in Milan

Travel tip:

The Brera Observatory can be found at the historic Palazzo Brera in the centre of Milan, established in 1764 by the Jesuit astronomer Ruggero Boscovich.  The Palazzo is also home to the Accademia di Brera, the city's art academy, and its gallery, the Pinacoteca di Brera; the Orto Botanico di Brera, a botanical garden; and the Biblioteca di Brera library. For more information, visit www.brera.inaf.it

More reading:

How Niccolò Zucchi designed one of the earliest telescopes

The 16th century cosmologist burned at the stake for challenging orthodox thinking on God and the universe

Why astronomer Galileo Galilei is called the father of modern science

Also on this day:

1820: The birth of future king Victor Emmanuel II

1972: The accidental death of publisher Giangiacomo Feltrinelli

(Gravestone by Deeday-UK; Brera Observatory by Ansgar Hellwig; via Wikimedia Commons)


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