third and won the Italian Cup under the stewardship of Sven Goran Eriksson. In 1998 they ended up in Serie B and only returned to a dignified, mid-table Serie A finish in 2004. Both Vialli and Mancini became successful managers, confirming the analyses that had seen them as ‘on-pitch’ managers in the 1980s and 1990s.
Genoa’s post-war history has been far less glorious. Like Torino, they have never lived up to a past that is now so far away as to be almost completely forgotten. William Garbutt came back for a time after the war but the club hovered between A and B, and never made a serious challenge for the scudetto. Winger Gigi Meroni briefly became a hero for the team in the early 1960s but the team was dogged by doping and corruption scandals. From 1965 to 1972 the club remained out of Serie A altogether and in 1970 they even ended up in Serie C, before tasting the top division briefly thanks to three promotions and the same number of relegations in the 1970s and 1980s. Genoa fans went through hell and humiliation as Sampdoria became a world-class team, and the derby ‘of the Lantern’ was rarely played while Genoa languished in B. Financial problems also hit the club in the 1990s. The only high point in the whole decade was a UEFA Cup-tie victory at Anfield in 1992. Otherwise, Genoa seemed destined to repeat the fate of a number of other ex-big clubs, scrapping for points in Serie B (with sides like Napoli and Torino) and living on distant past glories. Their only real hope lay with an ambitious and rich president, a dream that seemed to have come true with the arrival of toy billionaire Enrico Preziosi in 2004. Yet, once again, the loyalty of Genoa’s fans was tested to the limit as a corruption scandal robbed them of a return to Serie A in 2005. Finally, the 2007 season saw Genoa win promotion to Serie A after nine years in the wilderness. Once again, however, their patron’s role was marked by controversy. As the fans partied in the fountains of the city centre, news came through that Enrico Preziosi was to be banned from football altogether for his role in the bankruptcy of his ex-club, Como.
Florence. Purple Pride
There is no derby in Florence. Only one team plays there – Fiorentina, a side whose dramatic recent history has overshadowed its glorious past, made up of victories which at times threatened to break the dominance of the big Milan-Turin axis. Fiorentina won the championship in 1956 and reached the European Cup final a year later, losing only to Real Madrid. They then finished second four times in a row, but always by fairly large margins. This was a team constructed by Fulvio Bernardini, one of the most talented and original characters in the history of Italian football. Player, journalist, intellectual, coach, manager, Bernardini remained at the top of the game for two generations and took two provincial clubs – Bologna and Fiorentina – to rare scudetto victories. Bernardini’s record with Fiorentina was exceptional – one championship, three second-place finishes and one fifth place. The second Fiorentina scudetto was the work of ex-Napoli-star-turned-coach Bruno Pesaola, who kept the fiery Brazilian Amarildo under control just long enough to hold off the challenge of Cagliari in 1969.
Fiorentina were never to win another scudetto, but they came very close in the late 1970s and early 1980s with a team built around a stylish, loyal and unlucky midfielder: Giancarlo Antognoni, who suffered a series of horrific injuries. Only some extremely questionable refereeing denied the viola (the purple one) the championship in 1982, and an intense rivalry with Juventus was born. Fiorentina produced a series of superb young players in the 1980s and 1990s, none more so than fan idol Roberto Baggio, whose sale to Juventus in 1990 provoked a riot. Fiorentina replaced Baggio with Gabriel Batistuta, another hero who was loyal enough to play a season in Serie B for the club. With Giovanni Trapattoni on the bench, Fiorentina finished a creditable third in 1998–99. Then, total collapse. Club president and film producer Mario Cecchi Gori died in 1993, and was replaced by his fake-tanned son, Vittorio, who had political ambitions and an empty wallet.
In 2002 Fiorentina went bust, and were sent down to Serie C as punishment after finishing bottom of Serie A. Cecchi Gori was arrested on various charges, including drug use. The team suffered the intense humiliation of losing its name and original symbol – they became Florentia Viola for a year. New owner Diego Della Valle, who had made his money from a fashion company called Tod’s, was forced to buy back the Viola symbol and name at an auction. After rebuilding with a young team, the squad was ‘re-called’ to Serie B in 2003. The sense of injustice felt by Fiorentina fans and players was heightened by the huge debts declared by other big clubs, who were not relegated as a consequence.
The roller-coaster history of Fiorentina in recent years saw the club caught up in the calciopoli scandals of 2006, after qualifying for the Champions League in the previous season, thanks largely to the goals of Luca Toni. Nineteen points were docked from the team in the 2006–7 season (reduced to 15 on appeal) and they also lost their European place. Nonetheless, the team played admirably to pull themselves out of trouble and qualify for the UEFA cup.
The Provinces. Bologna, Cagliari, Verona
Only three provincial teams have won championships since 1945. Bologna, under Fulvio Bernardini and with midfielder Giacomo Bulgarelli as their charismatic star, won a controversial playoff with Inter in 1964. Since then the club has been through ups and downs, including going bust and being sent down to Serie C in 1993. After that humiliating moment, the club worked its way back up to Serie A, where it settled into mid-table respectability, before slipping back to Serie B in 2005.
Cagliari’s period of glory was in the late 1960s and early 1970s, and was based around the unique talent of Gigi Riva, who led the whole island into days of wild celebration after the 1969–70 championship. Provincial Verona, finally, won an unexpected scudetto in 1985, with a team lacking in stars apart from the Danish striker Preban Elkaer. Most commentators attribute that victory to the subtle management skills of a coach born in the working-class Milanese neighbourhood of Bovisa, Osvaldo Bagnoli.
Since Sampdoria’s victory in 1991, it has been increasingly difficult for smaller teams to mount a serious challenge. Money talks in the age of pay-per-view and the Champions League, and just four clubs have shared the championship in the last fourteen years – Juventus (6), Milan (6), Roma (1) and Lazio (1). The massive financial difficulties of the Rome clubs by 2004 seemed to point to a three-horse race from here on in: Juvemilaninter. Inter were the odd team out in this equation, a big, rich club who kept failing to win anything at all.11 Nobody else could get a look in. The unpredictability of the championship, which occasionally threw up romantic stories of loyalty, team spirit and shock results, had been killed off by the corporate nature of the contemporary game. Two football analysts have argued that this trend is part of a general shift towards something they call ‘neo-football’. In contrast to the game that became popular in the 1930s and boomed again in the 1950s and 1960s, neo-football is above all a TV and business phenomenon. It is also detached from space and territory and increasingly globalized. The domination of the same big clubs – which are now brands marketed across the world, largely through internet and digital technology – guarantees a world-wide audience and also contributes to the decline of the national teams. In the neo-football world, only two or three teams are ever able to challenge for the championship, money talks and the rest are just bit-part players on a globalized world stage, where Milan players are household names in China and Japan and football is played 365 days a year.12
Naples. The Longest Wait
As the fourth-best-supported club in Italy, Napoli have been starved of success ever since their formation in 1926. After some good seasons under William Garbutt in the 1930s they briefly threatened to win the scudetto in the 1950s, when ship-builder Achille Lauro pumped money into the team, and then occasionally in the 1960s and 1970s. Napoli’s fans have always had a soft spot for charismatic foreign stars. The team’s heroes over the years have usually been forwards – the flamboyant Paraguayan
