Juventus are a strange anomaly among the traditional footballing giants of Europe. This is a club whose fans were surprised by a new badge mid-season, and yet there was...
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Celebrating Roberto Baggio’s finest free-kicks
‘’He took free kicks like no other,’’ Andrea Pirlo remarked. ‘’I just used to stand there in training and study him for days. I think I learned something in...
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Ahmad Benali: Pescara’s Libyan hero
If you were to ask him directly, Ahmad Benali would tell you that he is, without a doubt, the first real Libyan to have graced Italy’s football pitches. That...
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Magical Marek Hamsik: Napoli’s comic book hero
Bologna’s Twitter account raised the social media equivalent of the white flag when they hosted Napoli last weekend. ‘Enough of that,’ ‘You can take him off now’, they...
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My Aunt Rose Reilly: A World Cup winner with Italy
“My aunt has won a World Cup final for Italy.” This can be quite the conversation starter, especially if you’re Scottish! There aren’t too many footballers from our small...
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Selecciòn Catania: When the Sicilians danced an Argentine tango
With the inevitable exception of Palermo supporters, every devotee of Italian football cannot help but sigh when looking at the current state of affairs in Catania. The recent history...
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Cassano: The boy from Bari who became calcio’s most polarising character
The 1990s inside Bari’s biggest slum – the San Nicola district of Bari Vecchia – were particularly difficult times for the second most important economic centre of mainland Southern...
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The Football Italia love affair
Gazzetta Football Italia: now that was a television programme. Although Channel 4’s live Italian matches were more than welcome it was the Saturday morning review and pre-cursor to...
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Atalanta’s Franck Kessie: The ultimate modern midfielder
To claim that Franck Kessie is the epitome of the modern midfielder is not an overstatement. And whilst it might be too early to deem him the ‘new Yaya...
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Gianluca Lapadula: The meteoric rise of the journeyman bomber
How does one describe an individual who has faced nothing but uncertainty, obstacles and doubt, only to emerge triumphant? Resilient, and it’s one of the many adjectives befitting of...
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