It’s a sepia tinted memory in all of our minds, Saturday mornings with our cereal sat in the living room watching James Richardson bring us the best of that week’s Serie A action. No responsibilities, no dramas in life, then out with your friends to recreate the best goals you saw from Ronaldo, Totti, Del Piero and co.
Ok, maybe you’re a little older than me, but that’s my recollection of Italian football. At it’s pomp, Gazzetta Football Italia on Channel 4 was pulling in around 800,000 viewers every Saturday morning. Its Sunday afternoon live cousin, Football Italia, launched to 3.3m people in 1992. So how did we get here? In a country synonymous with “the beautiful game”, the country who gave it to the World, how were we all so enamoured with the game of catenaccio and liberos?
To get to the bottom of it, we have to rewind to the state of English football by the late 80s. The three H’s. Hillsborough, Heysel and Hooliganism has left fans in England disillusioned with our national game. Heysel had resulted in English clubs being banned for Europe for 5 years, Hillsborough had brought about a huge change to the English matchday experience with the Taylor Report and Hooliganism left ordinary football supporters severely jaded.
All three of those factors in English football could have their own articles, own thesis and to explain them all properly they’d probably need one. However, we’re here today just to view the headlines as part of a wider context. English football was no longer cool, it wasn’t even very good. England were embarrassed in Euro 88, and stumbled through to Italia 90 with very little to convince fans of the tournament that was to follow.
The post Italia 90 era was even worse, Euro 92 saw England finish bottom of their group, winless and then not even qualify for USA 94. There was very little to be excited about in English football at the start of the 90s.
Serie A on the other hand was experiencing the post-tournament boost that comes with hosting a World Cup. Don’t get me wrong, Italia 90 didn’t bring the stars to Italy, Maradona, Gullit, Klinsmann and many other huge names were already in Italy before the tournament – but the showcase of Italian atmospheres, stadiums and culture brought Serie A to the rest of the World. The stadiums – now crumbling 36 years on – were the most modern arenas in the World and the teams were reflecting this modernity.
Italy sat constantly near the top of UEFA’s coefficient rankings, hoovering up European trophies and developing and advancing their game while English football regressed at the lack of European football. When Serie A was brought to our living rooms it wasn’t just “foreign football” on offer, it was the epicentre of the top level. And this all nicely brings us to the real cultural accelerant: Channel 4’s Football Italia.
Football Italia came into our living rooms in 1992, with the first match broadcast being an appropriately exciting 3-3 draw between Lazio and Sampdoria. Over 3m tuned in that day, a huge number for non-domestic league football, the highlights companion show averaged around 800k on a Saturday morning. The timing was key too, Paul Gascoigne – England’s darling after 1990 – had recently moved to Lazio. He was used by the broadcasters to gain traction for Italian football in the UK, our man abroad and all that.
It wasn’t just Gazza and the other big names though, there was something you couldn’t quite put your finger on – Italy just felt cooler. Sky had brought us The Premiership which was the new money, there was no “heritage cool” about the Premiership. The stuffy studios, the oversized 90s suits and perfectly coiffured hair. It just felt a bit uncool.
Football Italia though? James Richardson sat outside the café with his espresso reading Gazzetta dello Sport turned football coverage from a sport to a culture. The big names, the stadiums, the banners, the fashion and the fans – Italian football felt so cool compared to the muddy pitches and stuffy studios in England. Sky sold us football fixtures, Channel 4 sold us a lifestyle and we are it up.
All of this is great, but you also needed a good product to offer and you can be sure that Italy had it. English football was just beginning its era where it tried to shake off the kick, run, tackle, header moniker. Serie A already had tactical sophistication, catenaccio, libero lore and game management. But it wasn’t boring. On the contrary, the likes of Gazza, Mancini, Vialli, Del Piero, Klinsmann and later Ronaldo, Totti, Shevchenko and Weah gave us goals galore. Serie A became our byword for control and thinking football, it certainly didn’t invent tactics, but it embodied better than anyone during the 1990s.
Even once the Premier League began to attract the big stars, it was still in second place to the early-mid 1990s Serie A as a destination for the World’s elite. There was a certain style in Italy and it wasn’t just the way of playing. The clubs, their kits and the visual identities were distinct. It’s no surprise that even now, 90s Serie A kits still command the highest prices at collectors fairs and online. There was a style in Italy that England couldn’t match at the time, Italy represented sun, sea, glamour, drama, corruption rumours and ultras theatre. English football was modernising fast but still carried grey-weather, post-80s baggage and lacked the public imagination.
Of course, fast forward 30-odd years and we know that the Premier League would eventually win the war, but the 90s and early 00s belonged to Serie A. This series will expand on all our favourite parts of that era and the best players we got to see strut their stuff on the peninsular.
