It is an understatement to write that the 2000’s was a dramatic decade for Italian football. Scandal, a World Cup win and bankruptcies galore all received global attention. As the league transitioned away from greatness to entertainment, countless superb goals were scored, too.
Below, our writers bring to the front of our minds the Serie A golazos, lost from memory in the mayhem of the league between 2000 and 2009 and the drift away from free-to-air Italian football on UK TV.
Hyperlinks to goals in their titles
Dino Baggio (Lazio) 2000
While his namesake Roberto scored goals via ingenious and elegant ways, there was none of that fancy stuff with Dino; who loved nothing more than putting his laces through the ball and watching it fly.
Baggio was usually good for one long-range rocket per-season during his career at Inter, Juventus, Parma, Lazio and Italy. Here, Baggio had just arrived in the Italian capital the month prior from Parma as reigning champions Lazio needed cover in midfield with coach Sven-Goran Eriksson looking to compete on three fronts.
There was only three minutes on the clock against Milan when Baggio picked up the ball from Diego Simeone on the left, pushed forward and decided he didn’t want to pass it: the ball cannoned off his left foot and violently flew past Christian Abbiati at frightening speed from 25 yards out.
This was Baggio’s only goal for Lazio, and he couldn’t have surpassed it. Emmet Gates
Hidetoshi Nakata (Roma) 2001. (02:00)
It was one of the greatest supersub performances of the decade. A goal that opened the way for Roma to win its third scudetto, unstitching it from their cross-city rivals, Lazio.
2-0 down against Juventus, after conceding two in the first six minutes, Roma coach Fabio Capello summoned Nakata from the dugout, to replace Francesco Totti. The iconic Japanese player had trouble finding minutes in the capitale, but this night he made history.
Nakata, wearing the number 8 shirt, won the ball back in midfield, burst forward and unleashed a stunning long range strike to put Roma back in the game. His contribution to the comeback didn’t end with his goal – in the 91st minute, his powerful shot could only be palmed into the path of Vincenzo Montella who tapped in a dramatic equaliser. Michele Tossani
Eriberto (Chievo) 2001. 01:23.
Thank heavens that Luciano faked his passport so he could enter the professional footballing pyramid. Otherwise, we’d have been denied this audacious volley that the Brazilian hooked over Fabrizio Ferron from an acute angle in 2001-02.
Back when he was known as ‘Eriberto’, Verona and Chievo met for the first time in the Italian top tier. In the 32nd minute, Eugenio Corini speared a diagonal 40-metre pass over the Gialloblu defence. Most wingers would have controlled such a heavily-weighted aerial ball into the half-space. Instead, Eriberto wedged his right boot under the ball with just enough lift and dip to loop a first-time volley over the ‘keeper and into the far corner.
Remembered mostly for his deceptive behaviour off the pitch, he clearly possessed the ability to deceive while on it. The eternal city of Verona will forever remember Eriberto as a gifted maniac who scored the historic first-ever Serie A goal of the Derby della Scala. David Ferrini
Francesco Flachi (Sampdoria) 2003.
The little striker from Florence ignominiously bowed out of the top flight after betting and drug bans. Yet he should be remembered more for his eye-catching performances and stunning goals in eight seasons at Sampdoria (1999-2007).
Back in the big time after four years languishing in the second tier Doria took the lead at Perugia as Flachi scored a sensational overhead kick with his right boot from Fabio Bazzani’s flick on. Down 3-2 in the last minute the ex-Fiorentina forward went one better with a glorious leveller.
Samp full-back Stefano Bettarini sent in a curling cross and Flachi connected with a flying acrobatic left foot volley into the bottom corner. A marvellous union of timing and technique the attacker threw off his shirt and scaled the high barricades to celebrate with the ecstatic travelling Blucerchiati support at Stadio Renato Curi. Stephen Kasiewicz
Sergio Pellissier (Chievo) 2003 (1:22)
The 2000s was an eventful decade for Chievo. They gained promotion to Serie A in 2001 and the 2006 Calciopoli scandal saw the ‘Flying Donkeys’ play Champions League football.
Luigi Del Neri’s Chievo side faced Torino early in 2003 and won 3-2. The highlight of the match came in the 30th minute with the home side trailing 0-1.
Simone Perrotta played the ball forward from the right, landing it on the chest of Sergio Pelissier 30-yards out from goal. The striker chested the ball into his own path, adjusted his stride ever-so slightly and fired in a powerful dipping shot. The ball flew high into the net, passed Torino goalkeeper Luca Bucci who didn’t even have the time to dive as he remained rooted to the spot.
Pelissier made a total of 517 appearances for Chievo, this may have been the best of his 139 goals. Mark Gordon
Mark Bresciano (Parma) 2004 (02.01)
Bresciano’s Serie A goal catalogue during his twelve-year spell in Italy makes a convincing case that the parmigiano cheese loving midfielder is Australia’s greatest footballing export.
His 2003-04 season with Parma included a brilliant slaloming solo run against Siena to secure all three points and a match-winning screamer against Lazio that almost broke the net. ‘Bresh’ also entertained Parma fans with an outside of the box chested down volley against Lecce, with shades of Zinedine Zidane’s famous goal in the 2001/02 Champions League final.
However, it’s his goal against Reggina in 2004 that has made the cut here. Bresciano scored direct from a brilliantly placed corner which left Reggina goalkeeper Emanuele Belardi standing and watching like a statue – reminiscent of the Australian’s iconic celebration. Frank Risorto.
Gianfranco Zola (Cagliari) 2005. (03:17)
The Magic Box was better known for his free-kicks, chips and backheel flicks. But he fair knew how to head a ball, scoring more than a dozen of them across a 20-year career from Serie C to the Cup Winners’ Cup semi-final.
And at the age of 38, after guiding his boyhood club to promotion from Serie B, the pint-sized forward scored his foreheaded masterpiece. As teammate Massimo Brambilla prepared to cross from the right, Zola curled his run-up like an Olympic high-jumper, leaping above the six-foot-tall pairing of Lilian Thuram and Jonathan Zebina to power an equaliser past the gargantuan Gigi Buffon.
Four months later, Zola would bow out of football with another goalscoring performance against Juventus, this time with a brace off the bench. Andy Wallace
Cristiano Lucarelli (Livorno). 2006 (02:19)
As a self-proclaimed communist, Lucarelli is probably best remembered for his political views than his footballing skills. True, his 99 shirt for Livorno (chosen to mark the year of creation of a left-leaning ultra group) is iconic for more reasons than simply football but it is easy to forget that he scored 112 goals in 172 games for the Tuscan club and won the 2005 capocannoniere ahead of Alessandro Del Piero and Zlatan Ibrahimovic.
The following season, relegation threatened Fiorentina came to town in February to contest a dramatic Derby Medici. The magic arrived 76 minutes into the game: late winter Tuscan sunshine illuminated Lucarelli’s glowing talent as he volleyed a chipped Giuseppe Colucci cross low into Bogdan Logdon’s net.
As Lucarelli wheeled away thumping the badge on his shirt, no one watching in the packed Stadio Armando Picchi could have any doubt of this man’s love for the club and its socialist principles. Henry Bell
Christian Riganò (Messina) 2006.(03:00)
Christian Riganò’s stunning strike in the 2006/07 season perhaps best encapsulates the combination of tragedy and beauty that Italian football inspires.
Messina had finished in 18th in Serie A the year before and lost to local rivals Reggina in the Derby dello Stretto. Normal circumstances would have signalled relegation for the Sicilian side but the punishment of Juventus owing to the Calciopoli scandal gave them a reprieve.
The game came around again in September of the following season and it was Riganò who opened the scoring but it was what happened next that has entered the history books. With good work from Ivica Iliev on the left, Rigano received the ball with his back to goal. He quickly twisted and weaved his way between two defenders and delicately lifted the ball over the on-rushing keeper into the top right corner.
Messina’s fortunes took a turn for the worse, losing 21 games afterwards and they finished bottom of the league. Richard Hall
Giuseppe Mascara (Catania) 2009.
Giuseppe Mascara was a diminutive Sicilian maverick forward who had to wait until he was 26 to play in the top flight and had certainly done the hard yards at minnows such as Ragusa and Batipagliese to get there.
In his first year in the Italian top flight he managed six goals, with one of them in particular being an unforgettable piece of individual brilliance, at San Siro against the reigning champions Inter.
Mascara controlled a throw adjacent to the penalty area on the left hand side with his instep before flicking the ball up to set himself for a volley, that he then unleashed with dip and swerve to beat a flailing Julio Cesar.
This wasn’t even the only iconic goal Mascara scored in Serie A – his half way line volley in a memorable 4-0 win over rivals Palermo lives long in the hearts of Italian football enthusiasts. Jake Smalley
Juan Vargas, Fiorentina (2009)
There are attacking full-backs, there are goalscoring defenders and then there was Juan Manuel Vargas. El Loco – The Crazy One – drove opposition goalkeepers daft with his long-range ballistic skills. His left-foot was a death sentence for dreams of a clean sheet if you let him wind up and unleash it.
Clearly that message had not reached Atalanta on their December visit to Florence in 2009. They made the fatal mistake of allowing him a modest amount of space at a distance few would even contemplate shooting from. It was a cue for him to let loose.
The shot was pure Peruvian perfection, snaking its way through the air like a sidewinder set on its path of destruction. Even in replay, it’s not hard to see why it baffled the helpless keeper. This was vicious, venomous Vargas at his finest with a mad marvel of a goal. Giancarlo Rinaldi