Surrounded by 22 other Spanish trailblazers, Iker Casillas ecstatically took his rightful place at the centre of the podium as the all-conquering hero, discovering an uncharted world and raiding it of its riches.…
Tag: serie a
KNOWN AS THE CITY OF LILIES, Florence is the ultimate romantic getaway for anyone who yearns for a peaceful weekend in the tranquil surroundings of Tuscany. With its famous red top buildings, the…
I have this memory from my childhood that’s still vivid in my mind. It’s some time in the 1990s and I’m sitting on the sofa watching Channel 4’s Football Italia. I had…
KNOWN FOR HIS STRING OF ACROBATIC SOMERSAULTS, often resembling Faustino Aspilla’s, Victor Obinna found himself one day doing a different type of somersault – one which scarily involved him, his car, and…
OVER THE YEARS, Italian football has endured its fair share of sporting, socio-cultural, political and economic hardships. The 2006 Calciopoli scandal sent shockwaves throughout the Peninsula, leaving three of Serie A’s top four…
Antônio De Oliveira Filho was born in the city of Araquara in the Brazilian state of São Paulo on 5 October 1960. His nickname, Careca – which roughly translates as ‘bald’ – came…
“TO BE SACKED after being told that there was a long-term strategy at the club is something that I find very surprising.” These were the words of former Portuguese international Paulo Sousa after…
SWEDEN AND ITALY ARE TWO NATIONS separated by both geography and culture. Sweden is a Scandinavian country of just 10 million people where the Vikings once ruled, and where temperatures plunge below…
AGED JUST 35, to say Adam Crozier was a surprise choice to step into the role of Chief Executive at the FA would be understating the case more than a little. The…
Jamie Carragher’s light-hearted jibe at Gary Neville over his career as a full-back on an episode of Sky Sports Monday Night Football, where he claims that no young footballer aspires to grow…
THE NEW SOCIETY OF AC MILAN doesn’t sound too far from something the iconoclastic Italian politician and media tycoon Silvio Berlusconi would have dreamed up, but it is in fact the symbolic…
IT SEEMED AN IMPOSSIBLE TASK, but by the end, Lazio had made it possible. For more than two years Juventus had been undefeated in Turin, an imposing, inexorable force with six successive…
THE POWER OF ONE FOOTBALLER can often have an immeasurable impact on a club. Although the collective efforts of 11 players ultimately trump the effect of a single player, teams can easily…
BEFORE MATTEO DARMIAN, FEDERICO MACHEDA AND MASSIMO TAIBI, there was another Italian on the books at Old Trafford – the Red Devils’ first ever non-British player, Carlo Domenico Sartori. Born on 10…
Calcio in the 1990s was the golden age of modern football. From Franco Baresi and George Weah to Marco van Basten and Gabriel Batistuta, there were a good seven teams that could…
DIEGO MARADONA IS AN IMMORTAL ICON IN NAPLES, a figure with almost divine right within his adopted city and the Stadio San Paolo. In the Campania capital, there is no Pelé, Ronaldo or…
LAND OF MY FATHERS swept through the cold St David’s Day air, the Swansea Male Voice Choir sang for one of their own. The crowds outside the Leeds parish church were there…
ON THE HILLY COUNTRYSIDE of Serra Riccò, deep inside the bowels of a parish church, Don Stefano Vassallo cracked a wry smile. After days of painstaking research, scrolling through copious archived documents,…