Riccardo Orsolini tapped the camera behind Empoli’s goal three times. It has become his customary celebration and he broke it out after giving Bologna the lead in the 21st minute of their Coppa Italia semi-final first leg. It was a goal that had been coming since Orsolini almost scored twenty minutes earlier at the end of a slaloming run through the Empoli defence.

Bologna went on to win 3-0 on a night that could have been overwhelming for any provincial club in Italy. Coppa Italia is set up in a way that means an Empoli-Bologna semi-final is a system error rather than merely the luck of the draw. In fact, the prospect of Empoli in a cup final is so off-putting for some that Saudi Arabia were reported to be reconsidering hosting next year’s Supercoppa because they didn’t fancy marketing a club like Empoli, as opposed to something sexier.

But still, Bologna did well to navigate a tie against a team playing its first ever cup semi-final, one that had beaten Juventus and Fiorentina on penalties to get there. Bologna also have the added pressure of their fans’ ever increasing expectations, most of whom won’t have seen the club’s last Coppa Italia final in 1974, which Bologna won after a penalty shoot-out.

They’ll need to hold their nerve repeatedly in these final eight weeks of 2024/25. Bologna sit 4th in Serie A, currently occupying the final Champions League spot (though Italy could yet see five teams qualify). 

The phrase ‘one-hit wonder’ is often used in a derogatory manner but producing one great moment can be enough sometimes. Luther Vandross sang ‘Never Too Much’ and cemented his name in music history forever. Michael Cimino made The Deer Hunter, won five Academy Awards and then was never heard of again.

Bologna’s 2023/24 season could - and by modern football’s standards should - have been a one-hit wonder. But it’s starting to look like it wasn’t a one-off.

Thiago Motta led them to 5th place last season, which saw them qualify for the Champions League for the first time in almost sixty years. Then he left for Juventus and tried to poach his best player Riccardo Calafiori, who ended up leaving the Premier League along with Joshua Zirkzee, Bologna’s star striker.

The overnight sensation of 2023/24 Serie A had lost its three fundamental stars, overnight, or so we thought. Motta’s replacement was Vincenzo Italiano who had just left Fiorentina after reaching two Conference League finals and the Coppa Italia final, all of which they had lost.

Italiano split opinion, some believing he overachieved in Florence and others feeling that he - like his team - spurned too many chances to make history in the past two seasons. One win from his first seven league matches with Bologna, plus an underwhelming start in the Champions League had Italiano’s detractors sharpening their knives in late October.

Perhaps he was Italian football’s equivalent of Graham Potter, a manager who did well at one club but couldn’t make the grade at a Champions League team. His tactics were flawed and his teams were wasteful in front of goal were among the accusations levelled at him.

Bologna won three league matches heading into the November international break and snuck into the top half. A gritty 1-0 derby win against Fiorentina in mid-December prompted wild celebrations from Italiano as he ran off down the tunnel on full-time. Some took it as a slight at his former employers but hindsight has me wondering if the performance and result gave Italiano confidence that it might just work for him at Bologna.

They haven’t looked back since, losing only once since the New Year and have won six of their last seven league matches, results that have taken them up to fourth. 

Foundations for this Bologna team were built in the summer of 2022 when Giovanni Sartori arrived as technical director from Atalanta. Sartori has a track record unlike most in football, having taken Chievo to Champions League qualification in 2006 and his eye for talent made Atalanta the club they are today.

Along with Appennine rivals Fiorentina, Bologna were perennial underachievers but Sartori’s vision has turned the club around, working with former Bologna forward turned sporting director Marco Di Vaio. 

Smart recruitment has taken Bologna from lower mid-table to the Champions League in two years. Buy low, sell high and hire a coach with a clear identity. It sounds easy but most teams fail miserably at it.

Sartori and Di Vaio were responsible for bringing Lewis Ferguson to the club for around £2m and you’d be lucky to get him for £30m now. They doubled their money on Calafiori and Zirkzee, but it’s not been solely an exercise in making money. This is a football club, not a hedge fund.

They have quietly built a side that functions remarkably well and punches above its weight. Not every signing has been data driven or plucked from thin air in an obscure European league. Remo Freuler joined from Nottingham Forest, a dependable midfielder with a wealth of experience from his time at Atalanta, where Sartori signed him in 2016.

The sale of Zirkzee brought about the signing of Thijs Dallinga from Toulouse, one of the players who hasn’t quite hit his mark just yet. But Bologna didn’t panic because the true Zirkzee replacement was signed in January 2024, while he was still at the club.

Santiago Castro joined for £6m from Velez Sarsfield in his native Argentina. Few batted an eye at some 19-year-old with a handful of senior matches under his belt. Just over a year later, he’s already being talked about as the next hot prospect to sign for a bigger club.

If Bologna can hold onto him for another season, they should expect any interested parties to add a zero to the fee Sartori paid for him. Dallinga could come good too. His compatriot Zirkzee only scored twice in an injury-strewn first season at Bologna, before exploding into life in 2023/24.

Patience has brought Bologna to this point. It’s something the city does remarkably well, being patient. One of its proper, traditional eateries, Osteria dell’Orsa, doesn’t take bookings and is almost always rammed, but they make waiting a worthwhile experience. Leave your name, go to the bar next door and they’ll give you a shout when your table’s ready. It’s never too long a wait, but time isn’t the issue.

Immediacy rarely equates to excellence. Like a great ragù alla bolognese, you must arrive slowly to the point of excellence. By allowing Thiago Motta time to interpret his ideas and work with tools Sartori gave him, they were able to make 2023/24 happen. The same composure in enduring a slow start under Italiano has them on the precipice of playing their part in redefining the traditional power structures of Italian football.

Their final eight matches look daunting. Napoli, Atalanta, Inter, Udinese, Juventus, Milan, Fiorentina and Genoa in that order. As tough as that run appears, it’s worth noting that, of those eight teams, only Napoli have beaten them this season and that was in August.

They may lose their coveted Champions League spot in a gruelling six weeks ahead, but would you bet against them at this point? If so, you’d be doing so at your peril.

Bologna: Arriving slowly to the point of excellence

Picking an Italian team to throw your weight behind is a fluid process. You might have watched Gabriel Batistuta in purple and now you support Fiorentina. Kaka in Milan, same result. A trip to the Amalfi coast could have turned you into a Napoli fan (even if you should go local with Sorrento).

It’s also an overwhelming choice to make, provided you don’t have an Italian connection. So we’re creating a new series called: Why you should follow…\[insert team]. To kick us off, Genoa!

#### **History**

Genoa CFC are Italy’s oldest football club, formed in 1893 at the British Consulate in the city of Genova. 

English sailors often docked in Genoa on their way to India via the Suez Canal and some would play football in their spare time. 

Genoa won six of the first seven championships from 1898 to 1904 and a further three by 1924. And that’s where the good times end, sort of. A solitary Coppa Italia win in 1936-37 ends the list of Genoa honours, giving their trophy cabinet a historic feel that matches its surroundings at Palazzina San Giobatta.

#### A grand old team

Well, they’re the oldest club in the country, so that’s good if you like tradition and yearning for the good old days of - checks notes - 1904.

They are one of Italy’s most colourful and passionate fanbases, the [scenes on the Gradinata Nord](https://tmgitalia.net/posts/2023-05-07-genoa-la-superba), the home of the Genoa ultras, at Luigi Ferraris are often spellbinding. 

Genoa also have one of the best derbies in world football, Derby della Lanterna with city rivals and stadium mates Sampdoria.

It’s a place for forwards that captivate and leave. Think Diego Milito, Mateo Retegui. If you want to support the underdog, but one with a certain gravitas about them, then Genoa are your team.

#### Football in a UNESCO World Heritage Site

Genova is a medieval port city where historically significant buildings meet the Italian Riviera to create a spectacular location to watch football. 

This is where they invented pesto, focaccia and, according to the locals, blue jeans. You can watch the Grifoni one day and take a short trip to the millionaire’s paradise of Portofino the next.

Take the funicular up to Righi and see the city from above. Eat yourself silly, slip down the city’s infinite side streets, do it all.

#### A unique stadium

And they’ve got a really cool ground, where the wall of noise from fans of the Grifoni, as they’re known, reverberates against the four walls at Marassi (or Luigi Ferraris, as it’s officially known).

It’s a delightfully urban stadium, a rare luxury in the modern game. Football is for the people here.

Take the metro to Brignole. Walk along the river Bisagno and cross the bridge - while spotting the wild boar roaming in the dried up riverbanks - and you’re faced with the sharp edges of the distinctly British looking stadium.

Few grounds capture the imagination like Marassi does as it rages against the dying of the light. Renovated for World Cup Italia ‘90, they gave it the Ibrox-esque corners and a retro, almost individualistic feel that today’s architects wouldn’t have the guts to suggest doing.

#### An original legend

James Richardson Spensley, an English doctor on one of the ships docked in the city’s port, became Italian football’s earliest player-manager at Genoa in the first Italian Championship, played in 1898 and organised by…Spensley himself. 

Spensley coached and played in the Genoa team that won six championships, starting as a defender but quickly shifting to goalkeeper. The original sweeper ‘keeper? Maybe. 

Spensley retired in 1906 and died nine years later during World War I, having been wounded while working as a medic and tending to an enemy soldier.

#### A cult hero so good they signed him twice

Diego Milito. Born too late for the heyday of Italian football in the 1990s, the Argentine striker joined Genoa in January 2004 and scored twelve times in his first twenty games.

He drove Genoa to promotion the following season with 21 goals, or so he thought. It emerged that club owner Enrico Preziosi had conspired to bribe Venezia to throw the final match of the season, caught out when a Venezia executive was pulled over with €250,000 in his car. Their promotion was obviously revoked and they were relegated Serie C.

Milito left that summer for Real Zaragoza but returned to Genoa in 2008 with the club back in Serie A.

He stayed for only a year, scoring 24 goals in 31 games, including a hat-trick as they won 3-1 in the derby against Sampdoria. He joined Inter that summer and won the Champions League as part of a treble, scoring twice in the final against Bayern Munich.

Milito scored sixty goals in two and a half seasons in Genoa, three of which have been immortalised.

#### What to do in Genoa?

Eat, drink and be merry. Good food is almost always bountiful in Italian cities and Genoa is no exception.



Beyond laying their claim to have invented denim, the Genovese gave the world focaccia and pesto, among other more localised delicacies such as pansotti. 



Take yourself to Il Genovese for a pesto-based evening of food, or head to Antico Forno della Casana for some of the best focaccia you’ll ever eat.



Get lost down the various vicoli, or alleyways, around the city. Most are teeming with bars and - surprise, surprise - more eateries.\
\
The Zecca–Righi funicular is worth a few hours of your time, if not for the picturesque view from the hills of Genoa then for the experience of the old tram.



Head to the picturesque Boccadasse neighbourhood or the fancy town of Portofino. You can also just stick around town. There’s so much to see on via Garibaldi that you might not have time for much else with all the eating you’ll be doing.



#### What to expect following Genoa

Supporting Genoa must be like living in a grand old house. It’s beautiful, historic, but there’s always something that needs fixed. If you want passion tinged with chaos, then this lot are the team for you.

Why you should follow: Genoa

I’ve always been a fan of football’s secretive approach and its reluctance to let us peek behind the curtain, but I’d have paid good money to see inside the Udinese dressing room at Via del Mare on Friday night.



Several Udinese players had been at each others’ throats inside the Lecce penalty area after winning a penalty in the 32nd minute. All because Lorenzo Lucca had picked the ball up and pulled rank on designated penalty taker Florian Thauvin, who is also club captain. Here’s [the scene where Lucca defied his entire team](https://x.com/SoyCalcio_/status/1893040242279543194):

![Jaka Bijol screams in Lorenzo Lucca's face after stealing a penalty from his captain](/assets/blog/screenshot-2025-02-22-at-08.45.04.png "Big Lucca")

\
This is football heritage, a pixelated Renaissance painting. There stands Lucca like that one kid who had to go in for dinner and bring his ball home with him. You’ve got Jaka Bijol screaming at him in what I’ll assume is a mixture of the somewhat similar Friulian dialect and Slovenian, while captain Thauvin offers his own comedic take on the Gallic shrug. And don’t get me started on that bloody frog meme crypto sponsor nonsense.

Lucca won the argument, one which raged on for a whole minute. And to be fair to the big lad, he slotted the penalty magnificently. The commentators would have been frothing at the mouth in hope of some ‘narrative’ upon which to frame the entire game, had he missed.

He didn’t, however, and it left me thinking the end justified the means in Lucca’s insubordination. Udinese coach Kosta Runjaic didn’t share my sentiment and clearly picked up on his players’ refusal to celebrate Lucca’s goal, subbing him off for Iker Bravo four minutes later.

Udinese held on to win 1-0, creating no real quality chances in the second half and proving Lucca’s intervention to be a match winning one. That’s ten league goals for him in 2024/25, four more than any other Udinese player as they make up for almost being relegated last year with a strong campaign, currently sitting 10th.

Lucca recently gave an interview to Gazzetta dello Sport’s weekly magazine Sportweek, in which he said:

> ***“I’m aiming to be a starter in the national team. I’m convinced that I can do great things, but in my role I see a lot of competition, like Scamacca and Retegui, two very strong strikers who, compared to me, play in a top club like Atalanta. At the moment they are ahead of me, but I think it is just a matter of time and hard work. Soon I’ll be in \[a top team] too.”***

That last line might have played a role in his teammates’ anger and refusal to celebrate with him. Perhaps the manager is at his wit’s end and there’s more to it behind the scenes than we’ll ever know. After all, we might be waiting a while before Amazon’s All or Nothing make an Udinese documentary.



Lucca’s trajectory has been an interesting one. I’ve been following him since he signed for Pisa, back when he was just a 6ft7ins Football Manager goal machine in 2021/22. He started that season magnificently in the real world, scoring six times in the first seven games before going the rest of the season without a single goal.



Ajax took him on loan in 2022/23 and gave him a handful of minutes, but sent him back to Pisa the following summer. Udinese took a punt with another loan, this time with an option to buy. 2023/24 was a formative year for Lucca, scoring nine times and securing a permanent Serie A move. He’s kicked on this year and been called up to the Italy squad, hence the comment about moving to a ‘top club’.

\
It’s not the most professional approach, but that’s football. He’s a young, confident striker stealing the ball off a World Cup winner who has already missed two penalties against Bologna and Napoli this season! Move over, old man, the future is now. Or something like that.



It’s not a ridiculous idea for your starting centre-forward and top goalscorer to take a penalty, regardless of hierarchy. Lucca was obviously wrong to approach it in the manner he did but the more I watch the clip, I find myself siding with him in this argument.



His teammates spent a minute arguing with him, rather than having a quiet word and accepting the decision for the sake of squad unity. The TV cameras are always rolling, so maybe the dressing room was the best place to debate with Lucca.



Thauvin’s behaviour isn’t befitting of a captain and Bijol plays the bad cop role rather well, if a little over the top. The [picture of the Udinese players celebrating](https://x.com/Udinese_1896/status/1893058151026491848/photo/1) their win doesn’t bode well for squad harmony either:

![Lorenzo Lucca stunned as his teammates celebrate](/assets/blog/screenshot-2025-02-22-at-08.47.01.png "Lucca stunned")



Y﻿ou can see Lucca in the back row, looking rather nonplussed. Stunned, even. There's no hiding from it, either, because he's massive.

Runjaic hasn’t helped by substituting him almost immediately, an old school flexing of authority in a time when player power has never been higher. In the same week that Gian Piero Gasperini bizarrely blamed Atalanta’s 3-1 Champions League defeat to Club Brugge on Ademola Lookman’s missed penalty, Runjaic might have sealed Lucca’s summer fate. A move elsewhere, please.



Gasperini took something of a media battering this week for his moaning, while Runjaic assured that both he and Lucca would find themselves discussed in print and on screen until something more interesting happens with one of the big clubs his striker might look to leave for.



Does one and a half respectable Serie A seasons warrant Lucca to speculate publicly on his future and steal a penalty off his captain? Probably not. But this is professional football, where teams must win at all costs. And Lucca won, both by proving himself right to his teammates and in giving his manager three valuable away points.

\
Perhaps it’s a Pyrrhic victory for both sides. Udinese have almost certainly alienated their own player and Lucca’s given himself an awkward three months in the dressing room, unless everyone can make up and live happily ever after. Which they should. Cheer up, Udinese. You won! He was right! Sort of, but not really.

Lorenzo Lucca: Big man, big ambitions

This one is for the big lad who scores goals, despite looking like they’d show up to a tennis match with a snooker cue. Nobody knows how he does it, but he always finds a way. You can’t coach it and you don’t question it. This one goes out to the Bomber, the name given to the archetypal calcio goal scorer.

Christian Vieri is the Bomber poster boy, the ultimate big lad with an eye for goal. Don't expect the Bomber to pretend he’s Harry Kane. He’s a real nine, not a false one. Lee Chapman would be an English equivalent, dominant in the early nineties and probably also perfectly fits the sub-category of Bomber di Provincia the provincial club Bomber.

Despite winning the last First Division with Leeds in 1991/92, Chapman was never a member of football’s aristocracy, i.e. Manchester United or Liverpool. He wasn’t a media darling and never won an England cap.

But Chapman scored a goal every two games for Leeds across four years. In Italy, he’d have been one of many such strikers because although Italy has given so much to the world of football, the Bomber is one thing it has mostly kept for itself. 

In the same way that it holds back its greatest products from export, Italy’s footballing dominance across the nineties allowed Serie A to retain its greatest talents and recruit the best foreign players, meaning the smaller clubs were fed a rich vein of strikers who left an indelible mark on Italian football culture.

[L’Ultimo Uomo](https://www.ultimouomo.com/il-mito-dei-bomber-di-provincia) defines the Bomber di Provincia perfectly: ‘Without larger than life talent , they build their reputation through extreme drive for goals and their cult has grown over time, inflating their legend, confusing the imaginary with reality.”

The ‘Provincia’ refers to the clubs from Italy’s provinces, i.e. not Rome, Milan, Turin. Some would argue that Florence, and by default Fiorentina, belong on that list. But not me.

Many believe the Bomber di Provincia became extinct as modern football redefined the centre forward’s role. No longer just goal scorers, the forward is the first line of defence and should also link play like a midfielder. 

Pep Guardiola may have played in Italy at the height of Bomber Mania, but its effects didn’t intrinsically alter his footballing DNA in any way.  He joined Brescia in 2001/02 and that same summer, Dario Hubner left the club for Piacenza.

Hubner was a 34-year-old striker who’d somewhat reluctantly given up his career as a blacksmith in order to make the most of his natural talent for scoring goals. Nicknamed Il Bisonte (the Bison), he had a Serie A scoring record of one in two while smoking twenty a day and drinking grappa at half-time.

> ***Cross a washing machine to me and I’ll hit it.***

Guardiola’s first season in Italy ended with Hubner as the league’s top scorer, having netted 24 times in 33 games and becoming the oldest ever Serie A golden boot winner. 

That season’s list of top scorers, like most in the 1990s and early 2000s, included several vintage Bombers di Provincia alongside Hubner, such as Javier Chevanton and Marco Ferrante.

These names are synonymous with the halcyon days of Italian football and some might argue that the rose tinting effect of calcio nostalgia has overblown the impact a handful of mid-level strikers actually had on the game’s culture.

Social media made a whole thing of [‘Barclaysmen](https://www.goal.com/en-gb/lists/what-is-a-barclaysman/blt8d5e63a71ebf2634)’ last year, a title given to Premier League footballers from the mid-2000s. I rolled my eyes anytime this sort of discourse appeared on my feed, not least because being a Leeds fan meant I was excluded from the Barclays ‘era’, but because my millennial mind hadn’t fathomed that nineties football is no longer vogue.

But the Bomber di Provincia often had a mystique around them that the likes of Morten Gamst Pedersen could only dream of. Pasquale Luiso was the cult hero of Vicenza’s run to the Cup Winners’ Cup semi-final in 1998, scoring eight times while building a reputation for his supreme work rate and instinctive play. 

But Luiso was also a character. “Cross a washing machine to me and I’ll hit it,” he once said, a reference to his love of scoring goals. 

That wasn’t even his best quote: 

> ***I’ve got three certainties: my character, Padre Pio and my grandmother's prayers.***

Intensive media training means few footballers will talk about washing machines or Padre Pio ever again, but this was the type of persona upon which cult followings were built. That they defied all logic and coaching to become instinctive match winners was pretty nice too. 

They weren’t all Serie A superstars either. Igor Protti is another Bomber di Provincia famous for the final six years of his career spent at Livorno between 1999 and 2005. He returned to the Tuscan port city having left for Messina eleven years earlier as a bright eyed 20-year-old striker.

Protti made a name for himself in Sicily and then at Bari, whom he helped into Serie A in 1993/94. His final year in Puglia saw him score 24 top flight goals and be sold to Lazio when Bari president Vincenzo Matarrese realised the club couldn’t afford to keep him.

The Tsar, as he was known, dropped down to Serie C1 with Livorno after a few seasons as a bit part player at Lazio and Napoli. That move could have been construed as giving up, but that was far from the case. 

He fired them to promotion in 2001/02, scoring 27 times and followed it up with another 23 in the second tier. His performances at the tender age of 35 convinced [Livorno fan Cristiano Lucarelli](https://tmgitalia.net/posts/2023-02-21-cristiano-lucarelli-livornos-maverick) to beg Torino to sell him so he could return home and help Protti take them to the promised land for the first time since 1949.

Protti bagged 24 goals while Lucarelli added another 29 as Livorno secured a historic promotion. He retired a year later and handed the mantle onto Lucarelli, ending his career as a Livorno legend and true Bomber di Provincia.

> ***If Hubner is Pearl Jam, then Francesco Pio Esposito is Fontaines DC.***

Around this time, a man who’d been a bricklayer until the age of 25 was fast becoming a Fiorentina cult hero. [Christian Riganò](https://tmgitalia.net/posts/2023-05-23-fiorentina-from-cecchi-gori-to-double-glory) joined La Viola after the club had gone bankrupt in 2002 and been relegated to Serie C2, Italy’s fourth tier.

Riganò had a veritable reputation for scoring in the Siclian amateur leagues and gave up bricklaying in 1999 to play for Taranto in Serie C1. At Fiorentina, however, he was the right man at the perfect time.

They had no time, nor money, to pretend they were the same Fiorentina that had won Coppa Italia the year before. They needed a striker who would guarantee goals. Riganò was the cheap option, one befitting of a club that had learned the hard way not to live a champagne lifestyle on a Lambrini budget. 

Riganò scored 30 times in 32 games in his first season at Florentia Viola, as they were known while they tried to re-purchase the naming rights to the bankrupt club. They romped to the 2002/03 Serie C2 title and ended up playing in Serie B the following season as an administrative mess with Catania meant Fiorentina - as they were now called - were promoted to an expanded second tier on ‘sporting legacy grounds’.

Riganò scored another 23 goals as Fiorentina were promoted back to Serie A and would eventually go on to have one spectacular top flight season at Messina in 2006/07.

Football’s hyper-commercialisation in the 2000s coincided with the slow death of romance in the sport and, in turn, with stories like Riganò’s. Or at least it seemed that way. 

Perhaps we just didn’t know where to look, or maybe the nineties spoiled us when it came to strikers. The early 2010s saw Antonio Di Natale scoring for fun at Udinese while rejecting big money moves away from Friuli. The decade ended with a thirty-something Ciccio Caputo rising from Serie B to score consistently for Sassuolo and Empoli in multiple Serie A campaigns.

Bombers are a bit like grunge bands. There were more of them in the nineties, but the scene lives on in a different way. If Hubner is Pearl Jam, then Francesco Pio Esposito is Fontaines DC. 

Young, raw and talented, Esposito is the third of three brothers to join the professional ranks and may well be the best in the family. Much was made of his older brother Sebastiano when he broke into the Inter team at 16, but he hasn’t lived up to the hype as yet.

Pio has taken an altogether more secluded route, spending the last two seasons on loan from Inter’s academy at Serie B side Spezia, and the 19-year-old has benefitted hugely from playing out of the spotlight. He’s had his oldest brother Salvatore playing alongside him, possibly the best playmaking midfielder in the league. The two brothers have a decent chance of leading Spezia back to the top flight, currently sitting 3rd in Serie B with the best defensive record and fewest defeats, while Pio Esposito is the league’s top scorer with twelve goals.

Pio Esposito can count himself among a new generation of Bomber di Provincia, the rebooted version. Such is the network of modern scouting that fairytale strikers like Protti, Hubner, Riganò would have probably been spotted by a big club in their teens, meaning youngsters like Pio Esposito represent the next best thing: a big lad who scores goals. 

Football needs more of them and, whisper it quietly, it seems like they’re making a comeback.

Not only do you have the top scorer in Serie A, Mateo Retegui, a throwback Bomber who makes goalscoring look truly effortless, but you’ve got the 6ft7ins Lorenzo Lucca adding his own avant garde take on the Bomber at Udinese.

Serie B is littered with Bombers, several of whom find themselves at the top of the scoring charts this season. Andrea Adorante came up from Serie C/C with Juve Stabia and has hit double figures already. Pietro Iemmello returned to his hometown club Catanzaro three years ago in search of a strong third act in his career. He’s scored almost seventy goals since. 

This year’s breakout star alongside Pio Esposito has been Cristian Shpendi at Cesena. The 21-year-old, whose twin brother Stiven joined Empoli in 2023, has got ten goals, having made the jump from Serie C/B.

He’s got a bright future but the man to lead this next generation of calcio striker is Pio Esposito. He has the build of the best Bomber di Provincia, a burly figure at almost 6ft3ins and not lacking muscle. 

Pio Esposito has the same eye for goal that Protti, Lucarelli and co had. The difference is that he has it at 19, perhaps a sign that he’ll smash through the glass ceiling placed on all Italian forwards since Luca Toni retired.

We might not have the bountiful crop of goal machines we once had but prioritising quality, not quantity means we can enjoy Pio Esposito’s rise to stardom, a journey that began on the mean streets of Serie B. Who knows, maybe he’ll be brave enough to volley a washing machine one day.

A love letter to strikers

If you're a Fiorentina fan who uses social media, you've probably seen the tweets from Viola Nation (@ViolaNation), a blog about Fiorentina entirely in English, managed by Tito Kohout. 

It's not easy to find someone who talks so precisely yet ironically about la Viola, so I asked Tito a few things about his passion and why he chose Fiorentina in particular.



**Marta: First of all, I want to know how you chose Fiorentina? Why did you want to inflict this punishment on yourself?**



Tito: I didn’t entirely get to choose. My grandmother was born in San Benedetto Po but came to the US when she was an infant. She died when I was very young and I have almost no memories of her, but her favorite city was Firenze. 



When I was 10, my family got cable TV for the first time and we got Sky Sports. Shortly after, I saw the highlights from Fiorentina against Brescia,. Batistuta scored two and Edmundo got the other. The purple shirts, the charismatic strikers, the fact that it wasn’t English - I fell in love. The next year, we went to Florence to scatter my grandmother's ashes in the Arno and that sealed the deal.



A few years later, I found Fiorentina Offside, an English language forum for Fiorentina fans, and I began regularly reading and eventually posting. A few years later, the site became Viola Nation and I ended up taking on a job writing for it. Now I can’t imagine a life without la Viola or VN.



**Marta: Who is your Fiorentina favourite player?**



Tito: I’ve always loved Adrian Mutu. He had the technical ability and the personality and he scored every goal. I had a bootleg Mutu shirt that I wore for years until it literally disintegrated on my back. 



He was like my first crush, and even all these years later I can’t forget him. On the more obscure side, I’ve always loved Massimo Gobbi for reasons that I can’t entirely explain but did write about a couple years ago. 



From the current squad, it’s between Dodô and Luca Ranieri for now, although Danilo Cataldi and Pietro Comuzzo are closing in for the prize of my undying affection.



**Marta: How are Fiorentina viewed outside of Italy, and has anything changed since Rocco Commisso arrived?**

 ﻿

TIto: I can only speak for the US and even then I’m probably a bad representative sample, as I live on the west coast rather than the east coast, which has a much larger Italian-American population. 



From what I can tell, though, Serie A remains the fourth or fifth most watched league in the country and is generally only popular with folks who grew up watching it or have Italian heritage. 



I occasionally see someone wearing a Milan or Roma shirt but the Premier League, MLS, and La Liga (i.e. Barcelona and Real Madrid) are miles beyond everyone else. 



To provide some context, I went to a bar for the Conference League final against West Ham a couple years ago. It was packed, standing room only, and I was the only Fiorentina fan there.



Even among the few Serie A fans, Fiorentina’s a pretty rare vintage. I don’t think that Commisso’s purchase of the club has raised the profile over here. There was a moment where I thought it might - him and Vincenzo Montella on a billboard in Times Square was something - but it doesn’t seem like there’s any real effort to increase the market share. 



It doesn’t help that some at Paramount+, which has all the Serie A games in the US, seem interested only in the biggest clubs in the country and are aggressively ignorant about everything else. Maybe that would’ve changed if Fiorentina had won the Conference League, but I think it would take several years of sustained success to really get there, and even then I don’t think it would matter much. Nobody here’s an Atalanta supporter, for instance.



**Marta: Do you think you'll finally get to see a trophy being lifted?**



Tito: This year? No. Under Palladino? It’s unlikely but possible. Before I die? Probably not. Maybe my ghost can stick around and haunt the Rocco B Commisso Viola Park for the Best Players and Fans of All Time for another century or two. Maybe then.



**Marta: One last thought about the city that represents Fiorentina. I imagine you've been there many times. What strikes you, and do you think there is a unique and indissoluble bond between the city and the team?**



Tito: I’ve only been to Florence a handful of times so I won’t pretend I’m qualified to tell the people who live there about their own city, but what always stands out to me is the beauty.



I think it’s easy to forget if you grow up in it and see it every day, but it’s the most beautiful city on earth for my money. Sunset at the Piazzale Michelangelo always feels like watching something magical happen. Maybe it is.



There’s definitely a unique bond between the city and the team. As you know, Florence is the biggest city (after Napoli) with a single Serie A team, and that means the whole city unites behind the Viola in a way that you don’t see in many other places. I think the combination of that unity and the Florentine sense of humor and proportion is what makes it special to me.



On my honeymoon, I took my wife to the Atalanta game (2-0, Veretout’s penalty, Biraghi’s late free kick, Gasperini spewing venom about Chiesa's diving). She doesn’t speak Italian and doesn’t like sports of any kind but she humored me and ended up having a wonderful time. 



There was a guy with a Thereau shirt in front of us and a kid who, when Papu Gómez went down easily, spent the next 10 minutes yelling, “You’ll never walk again, you must be crippled for life.” 



To me, it’s that irony that sets the fans apart. The ultras are always present and the fans are loud and informed, but watching a child sarcastically attack an opposing star like that is amazing. That’s the sort of support I love.



**Marta: Bonus question: those who follow you, including myself, know that whenever things go wrong, tapirs appear in your tweets. How did this start, and why tapirs specifically?**

T﻿ito: Ha, I have no idea why I started doing the tapirs. I think it’s because they’re just funny looking animals and their facial expressions often encapsulate my feelings about watching Fiorentina very carefully set down a series of rakes and then step on every single one. Sometimes I wish I could’ve chosen the capybara or the hyrax or the gharial or some other dumb looking animal, but the tapir it is.

Tapirs and Massimo Gobbi with Viola Nation

“Families are always rising and falling in America,” said Billy Costigan to Detectives Queenan and Dignam in Martin Scorcese’s masterpiece The Departed. It’s a quote that feels befitting of provincial Italian football clubs, as well as US society.

It was paraphrased from Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The House Of The Seven Gables, a 19th century novel set in New England, several thousand miles from Genoa, the home of Sampdoria, a club that once rose and has now fallen. Hard.

The 1990/91 scudetto winners and one-time European Cup finalists were relegated to Serie B in 2023, winning three games all season and picking up only nineteen points, coming close to Ancona’s record low of thirteen in 2003/04.

Sampdoria entered the 2023/24 season in around €175m debt, a figure reduced vastly thanks to a restructure agreed between the club’s new owners, Gestio Capital, and the various creditors and authorities awaiting payment. 

It has since come to light that the majority of the club’s shareholding belongs to a group of Singaporean investors best known for their involvement in FUN88, the illegal betting company. Their ownership was [uncovered by Josimar](https://josimarfootball.com/2025/01/22/the-singapore-connection/), the investigative journalists, who have found that almost €100m has been invested into the club without a clear benefit or expected return.

This issue is complicated further by the Italian state’s Dignity Decree (Decreto Dignità) which effectively prohibits football clubs from taking gambling companies’ money. The gambling ads you might see on the digital hoardings at stadiums require the clubs to work around the rules, to put it politely. 

What this means for Sampdoria is as yet unclear, but one might expect a formal investigation into the club’s ownership situation given the lack of transparency to this point. For now, there are more pressing concerns, such as a second relegation in three years. 

At the time of writing, Samp are 16th in Serie B, occupying one of the relegation play-out spots. They are separated from direct relegation by only a point and it looks like being an incredibly tense final third of the season. They will search for salvation from Serie C while needing something much greater: promotion.

Most would have predicted Sampdoria to repeat their play-off run of last season, or perhaps to build on it with a challenge at the top. This time last year, they were 15th with 28 points - three more than they have now. 

Everything clicked for Samp in February 2024. Manuel De Luca started scoring, Patjim Kasami delivered several game changing performances and Fabio Borini returned from a three month layoff to provide valuable experience. They combined with Inter loanee Sebastiano Esposito to drag their team into the play-offs, where they lost to Palermo in the preliminary round.

De Luca left for Cremonese last summer, Kasami has been released and Borini fell out of favour, a result of the turmoil that began when Sampdoria sacked Andrea Pirlo three games into 2024/25.

Still, Samp had recruited aggressively and expectations were high. Experienced from Serie A arrived in defenders Simone Romagnoli and Lorenzo Venuti. Gennaro Tutino and Massimo Coda joined, two strikers who scored 36 Serie B goals between them in 2023/24, and Samp also added the usual loanees from the top clubs, such as Inter midfielder Ebenezer Akinsanmiro.

All of these signings pointed towards a successful campaign, but the club panicked when Pirlo failed to win any of the first three league games. His replacement, Andrea Sottil, was presented as an experienced replacement capable of guiding the Blucerchiati to a promotion they need to achieve sooner rather than later, for both sporting and financial reasons.

Sottil won four of his first seven league games and beat their fierce rivals Genoa in the Coppa Italia second round, but a six game winless run cost him his job in early December. Sampdoria moved on to Leonardo Semplici, their third coach of the season in just seventeen games.

Things haven’t improved drastically under Semplici, with a win and five draws from eight games, but they have suffered the loss of Tutino to injury and a continually changing playing squad. 

Sporting director Pietro Accardi took over from Andrea Mancini, son of Roberto, last summer and has made a concerted effort to build his own side and shift the remaining dead wood from the catastrophic relegation season. 

> **The Italian state’s Dignity Decree prohibits football clubs from taking gambling companies’ money.**

It’s no surprise that Samp have signed eleven players in January, or that last week’s debut of Samuele Perisan made him the fourth goalkeeper to start for the team this season. All four were signed by Accardi in the past six months, and they’ve signed another two ‘keepers in Alessio Cragno and Niccolò Chiorra just this week.

There will be mistakes in recruitment, often you have teething problems when you get a new sporting director and three managers in the space of a few months, but Samp’s recent decline has come at a time when many expected them to bounce back.

37 clubs have played in Serie A since 2015 and it feels like only the most elite clubs, those in the top eight, ever feel truly safe from relegation. 

\
Financial trouble, poor recruitment and boardroom turmoil have taken teams down in recent years. In Sampdoria’s case, it was all of the above. The boardroom issues still feel unresolved even after the sale in 2023.

The previous owner, Massimo Ferrero, was charged with fraudulent bankruptcy in 2021 and it was the melodrama surrounding him that most would argue sealed Samp’s fate in 2022/23. Gestio Capital’s takeover, headed by Andrea Radrizzani and Matteo Manfredi should have put an end to that instability and ushered in a new era.

Four months after ‘saving’ the club, Radrizzani was quietly ushered aside and sold his shares with only a solitary line in a Manfredi press conference several months later to show as a tribute. The questionable source of funds mentioned above remains a sore point. These things never disappear quietly in Italy, or in modern football generally, but when it involves potential financial gain at the expense of another club, all bets are off.

Sampdoria need promotion this year to make the long term project viable. Nobody makes money in Serie B, let alone the third tier which looms over their shoulder like the Grim Reaper. The weekend’s win over Cosenza is a decent place to start, but it’s going to take a miracle to drag them up into the play-offs and back into Serie A, just like the one that saw them saved from almost certain bankruptcy less than two years ago.

The fallen Sampdoria have threatened to rise again on multiple occasions across the past two seasons, but the brief moments of optimism resemble that of a punch drunk boxer needing a knockout in the twelfth round. They’ve got a puncher’s chance, but very few would back them to land it. 

Sampdoria need their season to kick into gear right now, just as it did twelve months ago, starting with Modena at home on Saturday afternoon. If not, they may well face financial and sporting armageddon this summer.

What’s wrong with Sampdoria?

When Paddy Sloan’s shot crashed into the San Siro goal past the Inter ‘keeper, he must have felt like no other Irish footballer ever had. He’d just scored in the Derby della Madonnina.

Sloan was a long way from Lurgan, County Armagh, over a decade into a career that had seen him play for both Manchester United and Arsenal either side of the second World War. The next stop was Italy, where he donned the famous red and black of Milan in 1948/49. A o few years earlier, he’d served as a pilot in the RAF, stationed in Italy during the second World War.

Sloan cost Milan £10,000, just under half the world transfer record for that time, a considerable outlay as the Rossoneri fought to stop the Grande Torino side that had won three consecutive titles after the war ended. 

He was joined at Milan by Albert Guðmundsson, whose great-grandson of the same name currently plays for Fiorentina, a recommendation of Sloan’s after arriving in Milan, having played with the Iceland international at Arsenal.

Sloan debuted against Nereo Rocco’s Triestina side that had finished 2nd the previous season and scored the third in Milan’s 3-1 win. He scored the week after, an equaliser in a 2-2 away draw at Lucchese. 

Sloan couldn’t have been further from his humble beginnings at Glenavon in the Irish League. He was playing football in a bustling post-war European city and one of his team’s league rivals were, arguably, the best team on the continent.

> **A Lurgan man playing abroad at a time when Milan may as well have been the far end of the earth.**

Torino had won three straight titles, but Sloan’s Milan beat them 1-0 at San Siro on 3rd November 1948. The win kept Milan in touch with the chasing sides atop Serie A but Sloan’s goals dried up, only scoring once in his next fifteen matches between November and the end of January.

A goal against Roma preceded a famous derby date with Inter. More than 50,000 packed into San Siro on the 6th February 1949 for a clash between rivals and title contenders. Milan took an early lead but two Inter goals had them in front just after the half hour mark. 

Less than a minute after Milan went behind, [Sloan levelled with a thunderous effort](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZfjaDlDZOCA) from the edge of the box. A goal like this, in a match like this, would be the career pinnacle for many footballers. Certainly it was the dream of any Milanese footballer.

And Sloan achieved it, a remarkable feat for a Lurgan man playing abroad at a time when Milan may as well have been the far end of the earth in the mind of the average person. The match ended 4-4 and left Milan trailing in 5th place. 

Sloan scored another four goals and ended the season with nine. Milan would finish 3rd, behind Inter and Torino as the latter was awarded the title after the Superga air disaster claimed the lives of 31 people, including the entire Torino squad onboard the flight.

Sloan continued on a theme at the end of this season: not hanging around. He followed the Milan coach, Giuseppe Bigogno, to Torino as they built a whole new team, but he failed to make an impact and left after three months to Udinese, who were in Serie B at the time.

He played 23 times and scored six goals in a season that ended with promotion to Serie A. Sloan moved on at the end of 1949/50, choosing to remain in Serie B with Brescia. He was almost like a prototype Massimo Coda in that he just wanted to score goals and make a few quid doing it, it didn’t matter about the level.

Sloan scored seven times in nineteen Serie B matches as Brescia finished 9th, at which point he called time on his Italian adventure and returned to English football.

He lined out for Norwich, Peterborough and Hastings United, as well as Maltese club Rabat Ajax, before retiring at Bath City in 1958. 

Sloan coached in Australia after his retirement and was named chairman of the National Soccer Coaches Association after stints managing South Melbourne Hellas and Brunswick Juventus, two Italian backed clubs.

Paddy Sloan lived football. Few players can say they’ve played for Milan, Manchester United and Arsenal (and Glenavon). Even fewer boast a CV with eighteen clubs in four countries before moving to the other side of the world and remaining in the game for the rest of their life.

Sloan passed away in 1993 at the age of 72. His legacy is that of a trailblazer, certainly for Irish footballers. Moving to Italy in the late 1940s, he forged a path followed by many more. 

Though his Italian career lacked the on-pitch impact of a Liam Brady over thirty years later, his story is one that should be celebrated: the maverick attacker from Lurgan who made it all the way to San Siro.

Paddy Sloan: Irish football’s trailblazer

Torino fans were decidedly less optimistic than their Bianconeri counterparts ahead of the new campaign, and ten games into the 24/25 season, i Granata have already been through the emotional ringer. 

They enjoyed one glorious week at the top of the table, immediately followed by a four game losing streak and a swift return to more familiar mid-table surroundings. 

During that run, their captain and attacking focal point was also ruled out for the season. Throw in a president seemingly doing everything in his power to sabotage the team and rumours of a Red Bull takeover, and you’ve almost got a season’s worth of drama, all condensed into the first ten matchdays.

Back in the summer months, there were quite a few comings and goings at the Stadio Olimpico. Most of them, much like this year’s unseasonably cold and wet September and October, didn’t inspire much enthusiasm. 

Media tycoon and club president, Urbano Cairo, is universally detested by the Torino fanbase. Toro fans would have loved to see the back of him but, unfortunately, he’s stuck around.

He’s always quick to sell top players and unwilling to invest in adequate replacements. The fans see his management as an affront to the proud history and spirit of Torino FC. In their eyes, Torino is just another business investment to Cairo, and he has no sporting ambition whatsoever. 

The Curva Maratona is where the ultras station themselves on matchdays and lead the constant chorus of support for the boys on the pitch. “Cairo, Cairo, vaffanculo”, and “Urbano Cairo, vattene”, are amongst the most common chants, sung weekly, without fail from all corners of the stadium.

They’re two short and easy chants to join in with but there are no questions over the fans’ genuine desire to see the man gone. 

Toro announced Paolo Vanoli as their new manager to replace Ivan Juric this summer. Vanoli had just gained promotion to Serie A with Venezia, and had previously served as Antonio Conte’s assistant at Chelsea and Inter – no doubt a great coach to work with and learn from – but there was some trepidation over his lack of top flight experience, despite his work in Serie B with Venezia. 

Still, there was hope he would bring some much needed dynamism to a side who were badly in need of it. 

Centre-back, local boy and captain-in-waiting, Alessandro Buongiorno, was sold to Napoli for €35m. No small amount of money, but disproportionately low for one of Italy's most highly-rated defenders. 

Ricardo Rodriguez, club captain, was released when his contract ran out, as was solid but slightly injury-prone centre-back, Koffi Djidji. Defensive reinforcements were needed, so Torino bought two thirty-something backup goalkeepers. Yep. 

Then an actual defender arrived, Saul Coco from Las Palmas. Not a household name by any means, but at least an amusing one that gave supporters something to smile about. Later on came the arrivals of two burly centre-backs, Sebastian Walukiewicz and Guillermo Maripán. 

> **An elderly man in front of me told me that in 60 years of watching Torino, never had he seen a Granata side play so well.**

The wings were also in need of freshening up, so in came Marcus Pedersen from Feyenoord and Borna Sosa from Ajax, both on loan deals. 

Fans were rightly pleased when Duván Zapata joined permanently following his loan from Atalanta, but at 34, he can’t do it all himself and needed some support, so an unlikely – but most importantly, free – attacker was brought in. Che Adams. Interesting.

Toro started the new campaign with a 2-2 draw against Milan, although they’d been 2-0 up until the 89th minute. The late collapse showed some defensive frailty, but there were also encouraging signs; backheels, dinks and dummies, passes around the corner and most of all, they were creating actual chances, something they’d done very sporadically over the last few years.

Cairo, like any good villain, must have sensed too much positivity in the air, despite the healthy amount of criticism on social media over blowing a 2-0 lead. So what did he do? He sold another one of Torino’s young and exciting Italian internationals, wing-back Raoul Bellanova to Atalanta for €20m. 



Without consulting Vanoli of course. And just days before the end of the transfer window. Cue 15,000 fans assembling for a protest march to the stadium, calling for Cairo’s head. 

Vanoli earned himself some more brownie points after the sale of Bellanova by announcing he hadn’t been informed about the transfer in advance, and that he had told Cairo exactly what he thought about it. This public criticism of Cairo really put him in the fans’ good books, and showed character to boot.

Torino vs Atalanta was a fantastic match which I was lucky enough to watch from the Curva Maratona. Great attacking play from both sides, clearances off the line, double saves, shots hitting the woodwork, and a comeback from Torino to make it 2-1 having gone behind. There was some last minute VAR drama to top it all off, and a penalty awarded to Atalanta which to the surprise of many, Torino’s keeper, Vanja Milinkovic-Savic saved.

As the post-save hugging bled into the post-final whistle celebrations, an elderly man in front of me told me that in 60 years of watching Torino, never had he seen a Granata side play so well.

He wasn’t the only one starting to believe either. There was a real sense of optimism growing among the fans. Che Adams was being praised for his all-action style and physicality. 

> **For years it had been something they’d endured, but now it was becoming something they enjoyed.**

Ivan Ilic and Valentino Lazaro had both awoken from the slumber they played through last season, and were linking the midfield to the attack with style. Saul Coco was quickly winning over the fans by virtue of the assuredness and solidity he brought to the backline.

The third game of the season – away to Venezia – brought another win, albeit in less joyous fashion, as Saul Coco headed home from a corner to score the only goal in the 88th minute. 

Torino only managed a scoreless draw away to Lecce after the first international break before securing a fairly comfortable win away to Hellas Verona, which sent Torino top. A shock Milan victory in the Derby della Madonnina and a stinker of a 0-0 draw between Juve and Napoli meant that Torino stayed top for a full week. 

It’s foolish to read too much into the league table this early but this was the first time in 47 years that Toro occupied top spot alone. Ok, it was only five games in, but Vanoli was getting the best out of the players. They were showing hunger. Grinta. They were attacking effectively. 

More fans flocked to Stadio Olimpico each week to watch this transformation. For years it had been something they’d endured, but now it was becoming something they enjoyed. But as we well know, when something seems too good to be true, it very often is. 

Torino were sitting pretty at the top, unbeaten after five games. Life was unexpectedly good. Then came the bumps in the road. 

First, they lost at home in the last minute against Empoli in Coppa Italia. Toro’s defensive efforts were far too lax in their next game against Lazio, opposing attackers finding themselves in comfortable amounts of space.

That game did end with a spectacular overhead kick from Saul Coco, which put some respectability on the scoreline (Lazio won 3-2), but it was a performance below the standards set in the opening weeks. 

They lost to Inter next, 3-2 again, after an early Maripán red card put them under pressure. Much more concerning, however, was captain Duván Zapata going off with a nasty injury. It was announced afterwards that he had done his ACL. Surgery required, season over. Captain, leader and main attacking threat gone. Things were really starting to unravel. The international break was much more welcome this time around. 

If these bumps in the road had thrown Torino off course, then they were about to find themselves careening into the ditch. 

They had Cagliari away next, a side who were yet to taste victory this season. Guess what? Cagliari came back from 2-1 down to win – you guessed it – 3-2. That made it three consecutive league defeats by the same scoreline.

A much-needed win came against the richest club in the land, Como, on 25 October. A bumper crowd at the Olimpico produced the finest example of booing and whistling a returning ex-player that I’ve ever had the pleasure of experiencing first-hand. 

Torino were already 1-0 up by the time Andrea Belotti – who scored exactly 100 Serie A goals for Torino while wearing the captain’s armband – came on, but the jeers didn’t spur him on to change the game. 

Torino’s goal had come ten minutes earlier through their own substitute, youth team product Alieu Njie, who intercepted a weak back pass and rounded the ‘keeper to score his first senior goal. 

At the other end, Vanja put in a fine display, making six big saves to ensure Torino saw the game through. Como were the better side on the night, but it didn't matter. The losing streak had been broken. 

> **If these bumps in the road had thrown Torino off course, then they were about to find themselves careening into the ditch.**

The next fixture couldn’t have come at a better time, away to Roma who were coming into the game off the back of a humiliating 6-1 loss to Fiorentina, and rumours were swirling of problems in the dressing room between some senior players and their new coach, Mr Ivan Juric. 

Nonetheless, the home side managed a 1-0 win, courtesy of some truly awful defending allowing Paulo Dybala to score. After the game, an angry Vanoli said it was the worst his side had played all season. They had wasted the opportunity to build on the Como win against a vulnerable opponent, and get some momentum going again. Instead, another 1-0 loss to Fiorentina followed the Roma game. 

Torino find themselves in 10th place with 11 games played. The more things change, the more they stay the same. The drop-off in form after their promising start has highlighted that the squad doesn’t have the strength in depth to sustain the kind of push that we saw in the first five gameweeks. 

The defence is a problem that should have been sorted better in the summer. Last season, Toro had the fourth best defensive record in the league. Despite letting four starting defenders leave in the summer, and taking in €55 million in the process, Cairo only spent a paltry €14.5 million to shore up the backline, buying three players. 

You don’t need to be an expert on catenaccio, or a mathematician, to understand that such business is not conducive to good results on the pitch. Dutchman Perr Schuurs will be a welcome addition at centre-back when he returns from the cruciate injury he suffered a year ago, although there is still no estimated timeline for his comeback. 

The attack looked like it had improved since last year, as Che Adams made a good start to his Italian odyssey and the midfield players were getting forward more. But without Duván Zapata, things have looked a lot more blunt. 

Everyone will be hoping that Alieu Njie can grab his chance and chip in with a few goals, but he’s still young and inexperienced, so it would be foolish to expect him to have anything like Zapata’s influence. 

There was talk of signing a free agent as cover, with a certain M. Balotelli mentioned (no, that’s too obvious, let’s call him Mario B), but il mister ultimately decided to make do with the squad what they’ve got until January. 

By then, Cairo will more than likely infuriate Aurelio Di Laurentiis with an insultingly low bid for Giovanni Simeone, and the club will be forced to hastily contact some of Europe’s aging, underperforming and wantaway strikers late in the window. 

Maybe Ciro Immobile will have had enough of Istanbul by that stage. Aging? Yes. Underperforming? Definitely not. Wantaway? Let’s hope so. I’d take him in a heartbeat.

Criticism of Juric, Torino’s manager from 2021-24, was often tempered with the acknowledgement that the Croat could only do so much with the group of players at his disposal. 

Those mediocre squads were a direct result of Cairo’s deathly tight grip on the purse strings, and the effects were visible in Torino’s league finishes under Juric: 10th, 10th and 9th. Over the last three seasons, they were the definition of mid-table and they often lacked any real spark in attack. 

Although Vanoli appears  – or at least, initially appeared – to be capable of squeezing more out of his frontline, he also has limited resources to work with, and the same president who seems to be conspiring against any kind of sporting progress.  

Even if Cairo is working against him, Vanoli has got the vast majority of the fans on his side, and he has the respect of the dressing room too. The general feeling early on was that he’s the right man for the job and that Torino have done well to get him but the string of defeats has dampened spirits since then, naturally. 

He showed that he’s capable of building up a head of steam, but if he’s to improve on Juric’s performances, his team will need to act more urgently to turn things around when it’s not going their way, and tighten up at the back. 

The upcoming fixture list isn’t particularly kind, with the Derby della Mole up next for Toro. Juventus are very likely to inflict a third consecutive league defeat on their rivals, then Napoli come to town two a few weeks later. 

There are ties against the likes of Empoli, Monza, Bologna and Udinese that they can definitely get something from. Vanoli really needs to take advantage of these games to achieve some stability in terms of results. 

If he can steady the ship, then I still have faith that he can start to build something, with a few January signings. Without Cairo dipping his hands into his pockets and giving the manager what he needs, however, then Torino fans could well be in for another season of frustration.

Torino: Urbano Cairo versus the Rest

Ancona might be a cursed football club. They’re one of the only clubs in the world that have been bankrupt quite so many times that they boast a lineage of team names. Four bankruptcies and a reformation since 2004, a fate so dire that not even divine intervention could save them.

Ancona peaked when they reached the Coppa Italia final thirty years ago as a Serie B club, a year after they were relegated in their first ever Serie A campaign. Sampdoria smashed them 6-1 after a 0-0 draw at Ancona’s Del Conero stadium in the first leg.

Two years later, they were facing bankruptcy in Serie C1. This is the point in the movie where a record would scratch and the narrator would provide some foreboding tale. 

They survived in C1 from 1997 until 2000 when they gained promotion back to Serie B and went one further a couple of years later, rising to Serie A for only the second time in their 97-year history.

Ancona’s 2003-04 season remains the worst from any team in Serie A history, picking up only 13 points having won only two games all year. 

> **The president was later sentenced to almost five years in jail for fraudulent activity.**

And then their misery was compounded by bankruptcy. Ancona were skint. Their president Ermanno Pieroni had run the club into the ground through reckless spending, maintaining a large wage bill full of experienced players with no resale value and having made bizarre signings, such as an unfit Mario Jardel after he’d failed to score during four months at Bolton.

The club were unable to register for the 2004-05 Serie B season due to their disastrous financial situation, and in August 2004 their president Pieroni was arrested on suspicion of fraud. 

It turns out he had been forging the company books to hide the debt problem and ensure the club continued to receive league registration payments from the FIGC, the Italian football association, payments he was alleged to have pocketed himself to the tune of almost €12m. He was later sentenced to almost five years in jail for fraudulent activity.

The club were refounded in Serie C2, the fourth tier, where they finished 11th and 5th the following two seasons before being admitted to Serie C1 by the FIGC after Fermana were declared bankrupt.

In October 2007, Ancona announced that 80% of the club’s shares had been sold to Centro Sportivo Italiano (CSI), an organisation run by the Conference of Bishops in Vatican City, the state of the Catholic Church.

"It is a way to moralise football, to bring some ethics to a sector that is going through a deep crisis of values,” said Edoardo Menichelli, Archbishop of Ancona, in a press release. CSI called it “Project Soccer” and received plaudits from senior figures within the Vatican, such as its Secretary of State, Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone.

Yet within a few days of the project’s announcement, the Vatican were ‘officially’ distancing themselves from the CSI, an organisation that they stated was run by “solely lay Catholics”.

They were keen to point out that the Italian Episcopal Conference (CEI) was not directly involved in the Ancona purchase. However, the CSI’s ecclesiastical leaders are appointed by the CEI, which is directly tied to the Vatican.

Obviously the Church is an organisation known for being shrouded in secrecy. It’s nigh on impossible to definitively tie them to the CSI. There’s no corporate structure to identify. After all, it’s a religious organisation.

CSI stated that “fans will have to give up incorrect behaviour with opposing fans and display offensive banners”. The concept of a “Catholically correct football club”, as CSI put it, and the fact that Pope Benedict XVI held an audience with the Ancona stakeholders seemed to suggest that this was a move endorsed by the Vatican.

However, within a few months of purchasing the club, CSI had sold its shares off to Terzo Tempo, a company without any religious ties and there ended the Vatican’s brief flirtation with football club ownership.

After surviving a second season in Serie B, the club once again found themselves unable to register for the following league season, this time due to unpaid tax bills and a lack of clarity as to where the required finance would come from. 

Ancona were declared bankrupt for a second time in six years and consigned to amateur football, playing in the fifth tier Eccellenza. They were immediately promoted to Serie D and found themselves back in Serie C by 2014.

However, financial stability was never anything but a pipe dream in Ancona. They came close to promotion to Serie B in 2015, a run that only served to get fans’ hopes up and pile pressure onto a management team that had no grasp on how to balance the books.

Two years later, they were bankrupt again. A €2m hole in their accounts was enough to send them back into footballing oblivion after relegation to Serie D and yet another phoenix club was formed. 

Unione Sportiva Anconitana Associazione Sportiva Dilettantistica began in the Prima Categoria, Italy’s seventh tier, which they duly won. They won Promozione the following season, returning to Eccellenza (fifth tier). 

> **Canil’s late intervention appeared to be a fabrication designed to placate the fans, who had surrounded the club’s headquarters, breaking windows and refusing to leave without an explanation as to where their beloved Ancona was headed.**

This breathless game of snakes and ladders stalled in the fifth tier, where Ancona failed to achieve promotion back to Serie D in consecutive seasons. This lack of progress displeased the fans, most of whom expected the journey up the leagues to continue back to Serie C, at least

Sensing discontent among the ranks, Serie C club Matelica’s owner Mauro Canil approached Ancona about a possible merger. 

Matelica’s name lacked the gravitas of Ancona, even if the club Canil wanted to buy possessed an identity that had seen enough riches to rags stories for a lifetime.

Canil’s proposal to buy Ancona required him to keep the current edition of the club alive as Anconitana, which would be kept as the youth wing of the new Ancona-Matelica merger club, one which would play in Serie C 2021-22 and be renamed to just Ancona a year later.

All was well in the city of Ancona. They had their old club back, even if it had been created like Frankenstein’s monster, and they were back in the professional ranks. What could go wrong? Well, meet Tony Tiong.

Tiong purchased 95% of the club’s shares in summer 2022 and garnered some early brownie points by restoring the ‘official’ name of US Ancona, as well as reaching the Serie C play-offs in their first season.

Ancona struggled last season, narrowly avoiding relegation to Serie D, and things quickly went south once the season ended. 

It was clear that the club were in serious financial trouble by late May 2024. Salaries for March and April had gone unpaid and Tiong was nowhere to be found. Well, not nowhere. He was in Malaysia, hiding from the mess he’d made in Ancona.

Canil still owned 5% at this point, and it was him that stumped up the cash right before the 5 June deadline set by CoViSoc, the body that assesses and regulates clubs’ financial situations. It was a move that seemed to save Ancona’s place in Serie C, but it was all a lie. 

The money was ‘withdrawn’ and the players went unpaid. The story of Canil’s late intervention appeared to be a fabrication designed to placate the fans, who had surrounded the club’s headquarters, breaking windows and refusing to leave without an explanation as to where their beloved Ancona was headed.

Tiong was nowhere to be found, not picking up the phone until after the deadline had passed. He made a brief media appearance, threatening: “Everyone shut up or I'll talk”. But he handed the club over to the city’s mayor within a few days and disappeared into obscurity, leaving behind one shell of a football club and a queue of unpaid creditors.

The latest Ancona rebirth project is underway in Serie D. SSC Ancona started again in the semi-professional fourth tier and sit 9th after nine games, having won four and lost five. They could rise. They probably will, eventually. But that’s not the issue.

They’ve been here before, four times. Are they cursed, or can they put two decades of bad luck behind them?

Bologna: Arriving slowly to the point of excellence

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