Everyone has their own definition of what makes a cult hero. To me, it lies in the iconic moments, the on and off-field eccentricity, the irrational dedication to the club colours.
You can ask me who are the greatest strikers to have played in Serie C. No contest: it’s Riva, Baggio and Chinaglia. Their stories will be told in the marbled halls of Nyon or the soccer galas of New York. Places where an ash-stained-blazered Zdeněk Zeman would be turned away at the door.
You don’t have to have eschewed Serie A your whole career to make our team – there will be some names recognisable to even the most casual Italian football observer – but it helps. So let’s start with some ground rules: Each of our XI must have played the majority of their careers below Serie A. And, their iconic status must have been obtained while playing in those same lower leagues. So no Baresi. No Hagi. No Buffon. (Nor was there space, unfortunately, for corner king Massimo “O Rei” Palanca, Salvatore “Viper” Mastronunzio and the still-game Pablo “El Cartero” Gonzalez).
We’ve picked from within the last 50 years, which takes us from the 1970s golden age of provincial football ultra-culture through to the present day. And tactically, we’ve chosen a 4-3-1-2 that incorporates all the classic roles of lower league Italian football, such as the undersized portiere, the veteran regista, the tuttocampista, the trequartista–rifinitore and the bomber di provincia .
So beware: this XI shouldn’t be viewed as a definitive Best of collection, but rather as a screenshot of the characters who have made Italian football unique over the past half century.
Goalkeeper: Salvatore Pinna. The Little Sardinian Chilavert
347 appearances, 351 goals conceded, 1 goal scored.
Born near Sassari, Pinna helped local club Torres to promotion to Serie C1 in 2000, then followed this up with a playoff semi-final appearance in 2006, captaining the side as they lost out to Massimiliano Allegri’s Grosseto: the closest Torres have ever come to Serie B football.
But Tore’s legend was born years earlier, in just his third ever game for the club. Drawing 1-1 against Vis Pesaro in the 93rd minute, Tore gave it one last big hoof up the park. The ball bounced 25 yards out and, skidding off the wet turf, sailed in over the keeper’s head into the net.
Tore would go on to play in Serie B, where he went 757 minutes without conceding a goal at home for Pescara. But Torres was where he belonged and, at 44 years of age, he was handed a fairy-tale ending to his career when he was asked to resolve a goalkeeping crisis at the club, meaning he could retire at the club of his heart.
Right-back: Michele Lo Russo. Bandiera Immortale
For more than a decade, Lo Russo formed part of the most formidable backline in lower-league Italian football. With a defence patrolled by Giuseppe Materazzi and Salvatore Di Somma (later of Avellino in Serie A), Lo Russo’s Lecce had the best defensive record in all of Italy in the 1974-75 season (15 goals conceded), before earning promotion to Serie B the next again season.
Standing at just 5-foot-6 tall, Michele Lo Russo was as tough as the rest of them and wasn’t afraid to bomb forward to support the attack. He would amass 418 appearances over the next 13 years, scoring one solitary goal.
Lo Russo’s on-field and off-field commitment to the Giallorossi made him a fans’ favourite, an adulation he yearned to repay by leading Lecce into Serie A for the first time. But this opportunity was taken from him in 1983 when he perished in a car accident (together with teammate Ciro Pezzella) on his way to join up with teammates in Como. Lecce would fulfil Lo Russo’s Serie A ambition just 18 months later.
Left-back: Felice Centofanti. Crazy Horse
If you typed “Marauding Italian left back” into AltaVista in 1995, you’d be presented with the frizzy black mane of Felice Centofanti.
Crazy Horse had impressed in Serie B with Ancona, persuading Massimo Moratti to make him one of his first Inter signings (he was supposed to challenge Roberto Carlos for the left-back spot, but Hodgson would ultimately bench both for Alessandro Pistone).
In any case, Serie B was Centofanti’s playground and his Facchetti-like goalscoring exploits and carefree attitude made him a fans’ favourite wherever he went. An 8-goal season at Palermo was followed by successive 4-goal seasons at Ancona and a 5-goal season at Genoa. Later in his career, he would even enjoy a 15-goal season at Padova as they clinched promotion from Serie C2.
Disenchanted with the modern game, 100fanti lived for the camaraderie of the dressing room and found himself dropping further and further down the footballing pyramid to find it. He would play his last game at 42 years old for local club Sannicolese.
Central Defender: Emerson Borges. God’s Left Foot
Brazilian by birth, Sardinian by adoption, Emerson has scored in each of the top six tiers of Italian football (from Eccellenza to Serie A). Originally a central midfielder, Emerson was moved into defence by Leonardo Menichini, who was Roma’s assistant manager when Sinisa Mihajlovic was similarly repurposed.
And there is a clear similarity in playing styles (if not quality) between the Brazilian and the Serbian. Monikered God’s Left Foot while at Taranto, Emerson’s precision long balls and long-distance free kicks are legendary among followers of the lower divisions, and his YouTube highlight reel is the equal of many a Serie A star (see his rampaging run for Nuorese vs Tavolara in 2004).
Emerson reached Serie A with Livorno at 33 years of age, where his class with the ball only partially masked his contribution to the Amaranto’s dreadful defensive record (77 goals conceded). He now finds himself back in Sardinia with Serie C side Olbia. The club captain will be 42 when the new season gets underway.
Central Defender: Marco De Marchi. Maifredi’s Lieutenant
In May 1993, a 26-year-old Marco De Marchi played 180 minutes in Juventus’s UEFA Cup final triumph against Borussia Dortmund. Weeks later, he was lining up for Bologna in Serie C1.
De Marchi liked to do things the hard way. He had already climbed the leagues under manager Gigi Maifredi, whose champagne football had earned promotions for Ospitaletto from Serie C2 and for Bologna from Serie B, on both occasions with Dema at the heart of his post-Sacchian pure zonal defence. Maifredi would be the one to take De Marchi for Juventus.
But it was in Bologna that De Marchi’s heart lay, so to Bologna he returned to adorn the red-and-blue captain’s armband on the dusty pitches of Leffe and Palozzolo. There followed another journey into Serie A with successive promotions under the legendary Renzo Ulivieri.
De Marchi was joined in Bologna’s restart project by one Ivano Bonetti, with whom De Marchi would end his career at a galactic Dundee side, a decision he would later call “the biggest mistake of my life”.
Midfielder: Francesco Lodi. Ciccio
One of his generation’s finest free-kick takers, Ciccio Lodi holds the distinction of being a two-club legend.
Entering Frosinone’s first ever season in Serie B (2006-07), emotions in the town were through the roof. So when they loaned in 22-year-old Francesco Lodi, a Serie A fringe player with Empoli who had featured on the prestigious Don Balon shortlist just a few years previously, expectations were high. Lodi met those expectations and then some with 31 goals over the next two seasons. Then playing as a trequartista, Lodi returned to the Matusa two seasons later, but was unable to stave off relegation to Serie C1.
From there began a love affair with Catania that started in Serie A and has since been consummated on the southern pitches of Serie C. Occupying a deeper playmaking role, Lodi came within a crossbar’s width of taking Catania into the Serie C playoff final in 2018, and he’ll be desperate to make amends when he resumes his relationship with Catania in Serie D this season.
Midfielder. Paolo Sollier. The Militant Trequartista
The red shirt. The clenched fist. The weathered brow. The unkept beard. The resilient stare… Half a century before players were taking the knee for social justice, Paolo Sollier would walk out onto the pitch every Saturday (usually) or Sunday at 2.55pm and give his own very public gesture of class solidarity.
If the first part of his nickname – that which tied him to left-wing activism – was fitting, the second part was a complete misnomer. Sollier wore the number 9 shirt at Perugia but was an all-action, blood-and-guts midfielder.
Raised in Turin’s industrial district of Vanchiglietta, Sollier began his career juggling non-league football with a full-time job at Fiat, before earning his way up the leagues with Cossatese, Pro Vercelli and Perugia, where he played for one season in Serie A.
The man Perugia fans called Mao was also an accidental author, penning the successful autobiographical work “Kicks, Spite & Headers” (which, as it happens, was made available in translation this year).
Midfielder. Ezio Vendrame. The Goal Poet
A legend at Vicenza in Serie A (despite not even reaching 50 appearances); a pure entertainer with Padova in Serie B. With Vendrame, there was an anecdote for every occasion, securing his status as one of the all-time cult heroes of Italian football:
There was the time he picked up the ball to greet his friend – singer-songwriter Pietro Ciampi – in the crowd. The time he dribbled the ball to the goal line in a prearranged 0-0 draw with Cremonese, only to feign a shot, turn round and dribble it back to midfield. The time he took a bribe to throw a game against his former team Udinese, but then changed his mind upon getting booed coming out the tunnel and proceeded to score two goals in the performance of his life, including one direct from a corner.
The Friulian George Best was also the author of the vedetta, an in-game moment where he would stop, stand on the ball and, with his hand placed open-palmed over his brow, survey his teammates further up the field before pinging an inch-perfect 40-yard pass.
Attacking Midfield. Lamberto Zauli. The Zidane of Serie B
“I didn’t go into the penalty box; I’d hang back and look for my teammates. Whether I was in Serie C2 or Serie A, I’d always end the season with six goals.”
In the mid-90s, Italian football was hit by a crisis of supply and demand. The move towards zonal systems meant there was no longer room at the top table for a high-calibre generation of No 10s that included Domenico Morfeo, Ighli Vannucchi and Enrico Buonocore.
Lamberto Zauli was the poster boy of that generation, pulling strings that disciples of Arrigo Sacchi insisted were no longer there to pull. And if it hadn’t been for Francesco Guidolin, we might never have got to enjoy him at all. After all, it was Guidolin who restored Zauli from left midfield to his natural No 10 role at Ravenna, before placing him at the centre of a Vicenza side that would reach the 1998 Cup Winners’ Cup semi-finals.
Too classy for Serie B but not prolific enough for a long career in Serie A, il Principe interpreted the trequartista position with an almost South American purity at odds with the prevailing narrative (set by the likes of Baggio, Del Piero and Totti) that No 10s were there to bang in 10 to 15 goals a season.
Striker: Stefan Schwoch. Sansone
The 90s and early 2000s were the golden age of the Bomber di provincia – the serial marksmen who toured provincial clubs guaranteeing goals galore, often after having served a testing apprenticeship in the lower leagues.
Schwoch’s journey led him through the footballing nowhere-lands of Benacense Riva and Crevalcore before spitting him out at Venezia for a six-month spell in Serie A in 1999. Those 14 appearances would be the sum of his Serie A career. Instead, he would make his name in Serie B, becoming an icon first with Napoli and then with Vicenza.
The hippy-haired South Tyrolean’s 22-goal haul for Napoli during their 2000-01 Serie B promotion season was a post-war club record. But it wasn’t just the quantity of his goals that made him an instant cult hero; it was the way he scored them. Not endowed with exceptional physical or technical traits, Schwoch was a frantic runner and an emphatic finisher, as embodied by his promotion-clincher at Pistoiese.
Schwoch’s time at Vicenza would be similarly fabled. Joining the club as a 31-year-old, the man who became known as Sansone – or Samson – for his wild-but-handsome look would captain Lane for six years and set the all-time Serie B goalscoring record with 135 career goals.
Striker: Erasmo Iacovone. Iaco-gol
In a recent interview with Il Giornale, World Cup winner Franco Selvaggi was asked about his greatest ever teammates. “Zico at Udinese, Rummenigge at Inter and Iacovone at Taranto”, he replied.
Despite being just 5-foot-8 tall, Erasmo Iacovone stood out for his aerial prowess, his gargantuan leap immortalised in one still photo against Bari where he is captured rising high above the Galletti defence – and seemingly above the terraces – to head at goal. CR7, eat your heart out.
But it was Iaco-gol’s on-field & off-field poise that made him a hero to generations of Taranto supporters. Big games make legends. And it was again against arch-rivals Bari that Erasmo scored his most iconic goal. Receiving the ball in the penalty area, Iaco-gol made time stand still as he patiently sat the Bari goalkeeper on his backside before deftly scooping it over him like some nonchalant, moustachioed prince.
But those iconic moments would only last until 6 February 1978 when, aged just 25, Iaco-gol joined up with God’s dream team. Just hours before the car accident that took his life, Iacovone graced the Stadio Salinella one last time in a match against Cremonese. Going into the game as Serie B’s top goalscorer, Taranto’s fired-up No 9 did everything but score, hitting the woodwork twice and having countless others miraculously saved by Alberto Ginulfi, the goalkeeper famous for keeping Pele at bay.
Taranto’s next home match took place at the renamed Stadio Erasmo Iacovone, a testament – in a city where bureaucracy moves slower than the ships that pass through its canal – to Taranto’s love for her adopted son.