Bari’s charismatic President, Vincenzo Matarrese, had grandiose visions for his club. I Galletti had historically flitted between Italy’s first and second … More
Category: Writing
It’s Not Me, It’s You: The Story Of San Siro’s Abandoned Sectors
La Gazzetta last week reported that AC Milan had broken the record for gate receipts at San Siro. An official … More
Home From Home: The Tales Of Italian Clubs Sacrificing Home Advantage In Europe
Inter’s visionary coach Helenio Herrera was a man ahead of his time. In the 1960s, he had been an early adopter … More
The Extraordinary Busman’s Holiday: Riding With Sampdoria At The Peak Of Their Powers
Did you ever hear the one about the English bus driver who inadvertently became part of Sampdoria’s backroom staff at … More
Misshapes, Mistakes, Misfits: The introduction of squad numbers in Italian football
It’s been almost thirty years since squad numbers became an established feature of the football landscape. Naturally, traditionalists mourned the loss of the … More
What do robots know about Italian football? We challenged ChatGPT with some calcio questions…
For many years, experts have pondered whether traditional jobs will eventually be replaced by robots and artificial intelligence. With the … More
Firecrackers and Ice Cubes: An Analysis of Mischief in Serie B
Each week, the Serie B authorities dish out a series of fines relating to events that occurred during the previous … More
Gli Esonerati – Why Italians Go Back To Their Exes
History. Romance. Passion. And a predilection for chaos. It sometimes appears that Italian football observes a different set of customs … More
Chaos, Corruption and an Over-Sized Golden Boot: The Tale of Serie A’s Worst Ever Team
Hedonistic transfer policy was the recurrent hallmark of my teenage escapades on the Championship Manager computer game. A veritable revolving … More
American Dream or Cruel Reality? Unravelling the Mystery of Roy Lassiter’s Snowbound Wonder Goal For Genoa
Some say it was the embodiment of technical perfection. A goal that would have changed the course of a stricken … More