Revisit the era of Gazza, skits and ‘golazzos’
Nostalgic Football Italia show took Alan Tyers back to a time when Serie A captured the imaginations of British fans
‘Gazza was never a diva but you were always scared about what he was going to do next’
In 1992, UK sporting television saw the birth of an unlikely hit when Channel 4 bought the rights to action from Serie A.
Three million people watched the debut live game, Sampdoria 3 Lazio 3, and thus began a love affair between Britons and Italian football that is perhaps no less sweet for being a fading memory.
Aside from the live action on Sunday, the key factor in this success was the Saturday-morning highlights and magazine show Gazzetta Football Italia, hosted by James Richardson.
The era was celebrated this weekend with a terrific documentary on BT Sport 2, Golazzo: The Football Italia Story. It is on again this week on Wednesday after the Liverpool v Manchester City game and is well worth a look.
Gazzetta came at the right time: the 1990 World Cup had captured British imaginations, football was freeing itself from the Eighties hooligan doldrums. Paul Gascoigne had signed for Lazio, and also as the presenter of Channel 4’s highlights. Gazza’s talents, it is fair to say, were not best suited for the rigours of anchoring a weekly show, and Richardson became the front man, with Gazza his regular guest.
“He was a great performer, a really nice guy. It was just great fun getting him to do stuff,” said Richardson. “He was never a diva but you were always a bit scared about what he was going to do next. I remember him crashing his car into mine after we went for a meal.”
With football’s biggest star on board, and a winning mixture of skits, goals and travelogue, generally featuring Richardson suavely flicking through Italian papers while drinking an espresso, a cult favourite was born.
There were daft sketches in which Attilio Lombardo danced the Lambada and Gianfranco Zola gamely attempted to speak Cockney in ‘Cor Blimey Guv’nor’ style, and also excellent sporting insights into what was clearly the most important league in the world at the time. English football, where dinosaurs still walked the earth, seemed lumpen by comparison.
Along with the work of Danny Baker and Danny Kelly and, slightly later, Football365 on the internet, a new type of football media emerged throughout the Nineties.
“We discovered a massive market for people who understand football in a different way to how it was presented by Saint and Greavsie,” said Richardson. “It catered to people who take a more cerebral, philosophical approach to football, interpreting it differently.”
The fall of Italian football, via boardroom scandal and decline on the pitch, ensured that Football Italia had run its race within 10 years, when it ceased on Channel 4. Meanwhile, the rise of satellite TV diluted the exotic frisson of watching a foreign league, and the frantic psychodrama of the Premier League suffocated all other products. That quirky, sophisticated niche that Richardson and Football Italia occupied would never really translate to the mainstream.
“I try not to take things too seriously, and some people do want their football to be taken very seriously indeed,” he said. “It is an all-consuming passion. Not something to have a chuckle with.”
From 1992 for a few years, Italian football seemed like the coolest form of the sport, as contributors to this film, including Paul Ince, Rio Ferdinand and Frank Lampard, agree. Anyone whose ears still prick up to the theme tune’s cry of “Golazzo!” will be transported right back to the era of Batigol et al, and all the happier for it.