Roma are one of Europe’s sleeping giants. For some reason, they’ve asked lower league manager Martyn Green to wake them up…
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Tag: Italy
The Heartbreaking Story of the First Italian Invincibles
If you were to guess at the first team to go through an entire Serie A season unbeaten, a few obvious names leap out. The Milan clubs, Juventus, maybe Roma or Lazio. But in the 1978-9 season, in a long, difficult title fight against Milan, it was a small regional side from Umbria, Perugia, who achieved the feat. And yet, more remarkably still, they somehow still failed to win the Scudetto.
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The Darlington Maldini
Following their success at the 1966 World Cup, and the disappointment of a Quarter-Final exit in 1970, there was shock in 1973 when England, still under the command of Sir Alf Ramsey, was unable to qualify for the competition to take place in the following year. Jan Tomaszewski, branded a clown by Brian Clough, put in a man of the match performance for Poland, and Alf Ramsey left his post to be replaced by Don Revie. But that didn’t mean England had no representation at the tournament. Most famously, Jack Taylor refereed the final between West Germany and the Netherlands. But more intriguing is the story of Joseph Wilson, Lazio legend and Italy international.
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When UFOs Stopped Play
When fans filed into the Stadio Artemio Franchi in October 1954, the excitement was building for a thrilling derby between Tuscan giants Fiorentina and local rivals, and minnows, Pistoiese. Ten thousand people packed the concrete arena for the game, and the first half passed without any noteworthy incident. But just as the second half kicked off, an unusual hush fell over the stadium. Fans were distracted from their conversations, players turned away from the pitch, and the ball rolled, neglected, to a stop. More than ten thousand people, and all of them had their eyes trained on the skies above.
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Gre-No-Li: Milan’s Unstoppable Swedes
Zlatan Ibrahimovic recently announced that he was looking to sign another contract at Milan, in his 40th year, having led the line alongside Olivier Giroud as the Rossoneri lead the Serie A table and look for a first Serie A win since 2011. He has helped the cause with more than just his eight goals this season; he is an icon, a gravitational presence that inspires and intimidates in equal measure. But he is far from the first Swede to make his way to the San Siro, and in the minds of many, he may not even be the best.
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Helenio Herrera and the Birth of Italian Football
“Clown and genius, buffoon and ascetic, rogue and model father, sultan and faithful husband, swaggering fool and quiet achiever, delinquent and competent, megalomaniac and health fanatic. Herrera is all of the above and more.” So said Italian football journalist Gianni Brera in 1966, as Herrera took Inter to their third Serie A title in four years, a spell that also brought two European Cups. The Argentinian, by this stage, had already changed football in completely unrecognisable ways, and put in place practices that echo through to the modern game. He was perhaps the first modern manager.
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The (Original) Italian Stallions
In 2021, Italy broke the record for the longest unbeaten run in international football. It has been an incredible period since their failure to qualify for the 2018 World Cup in Russia, not suffering defeat between 10th October 2018, and their Nations League Final defeat to Spain on 6th October 2021, including a record-breaking run of clean sheets, and, as we are all too aware, the winning of a major trophy. A goalless draw against Switzerland seems an anticlimactic way of celebrating the achievement, but it will stand in the record books, for a while at least. What makes the achievement even more spectacular is the scrutiny, the pressure, and the expectation of the whole of Italy that this team carried with them.
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