The Golazzo Collection, part one – Serie A’s mavericks, eccentrics & colourful characters | OneFootball

Nostalgists, historians, Italophiles, or just lovers of great stories about football: this is your lucky day. You may well already know about Golazzo, our podcast celebrating the finest tales from Italian football past, but if not then what better time to get yourself acquainted with the back catalogue. This will be the first of a series of collections, grouping some of our Golazzos around a loose theme, the theme this week being the more interesting and colourful characters that we’ve seen in Serie A and Italy more generally down the years.

Enjoy, and whatever you do, don’t forget to subscribe so you don’t miss the next one…

Maradona’s Napoli

It’s the story of the love affair between one man and one city: Diego Maradona’s seven sensational seasons in Naples.  James Horncastle is joined by the Oscar- and Bafta-winning director Asif Kapadia – currently editing his next documentary, El Diego – to talk adulation and addiction,  indulgence and inspiration, and success and Scudetti

Guns, riots and the craziest team ever – Lazio in the early 70s

Zdeněk Zeman: Revolutionary manager on and off the pitch

Alvaro Recoba – waster or wunderkind?

In a team containing Ronaldo, Zamorano and Djorkaeff, Uruguayan striker Alvaro Recoba was the man who Inter owner Massimo Moratti described as ‘quite simply football’. Or to look at it from a less favourable point of view, was Recoba the biggest underachiever in the history of Serie A? He hated training but he loved to score direct from corners. It’s a story that features fishing, Pro Evo and Princess Diana.

FEATURE: Inter v Empoli, 2007: the last dance of Alvaro Recoba

The panel examines the life and times of former Perugia owner Luciano Gaucci. Gaucci shot to worldwide prominence after being reported to have sacked Perugia’s South Korean World Cup hero Ahn Jung-Hwan for knocking Italy out of the World Cup in 2002. He dined at the White House, hired a Gadaffi, gave a referee a racehorse and generally made Massimo Cellino look like Daniel Levy. Find out how this man played a role in breaking Serie A, giving the world Marco Materazzi and getting Sven the England job.

We marvel at the player who has announced his retirement from football (for the third time), the one and only Antonio Cassano. The boy from Bari who loved football but probably not as much as he loved sex and sugar. Cassano packed more into his career than most – including heart surgery and over 700 women.

A look back at Zamparini’s time in Sicily. We bring you the whole story. From Vasquez to Viagra. It’s the story that includes over a thousand sexual conquests and Jimbo’s favourite goal in Serie A history. The story of the man who found a kindred spirit in Kyle Lafferty. In an extremely competitive field, Zamparini is a record-breaker when it comes to owners dismissing managers in Italy. 45 sackings in 16 years will do that. And it was a golden age on the field, starring the likes of Cavani, Pastore, Dybala, Grosso, Toni. The list went on, as Palermo were regulars on the European scene

The guys analyse the impact of Livorno striker Cristiano Lucarelli on Italian football. Lucarelli was the top scorer in Serie A but didn’t believe in separating politics from football. From Che Guevara t-shirts to starting his own newspaper, this tale includes Berlusconi bandanas and Luther Blissett’s role in Italian anarchism.

We are back to single out Silvio Berlusconi, the club owner turned prime minister and one of the most important men in Italian football history. The first in a two-part special looks at how Berlusconi brought an elite level set-up on and off the pitch, making his three-time Champions League winners AC Milan the benchmark in European football.

FEATURE: Milan 5-0 Real Madrid, 1989: the day Berlusconi’s Milan came of age…

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