TOP TOTTI
BARNEY STEPHENSON looks at the career of a Roma and Italy icon
Italy’s last great fantasista
FRANCESCO Totti is 40 this year. He has just made his 600th Serie A appearance for Roma and has scored vital goals as I Giallorossi secure Champions League qualification.
Out of contract this summer, the eternal city holds its breath as the future of their favourite son, who has notched almost 250 league goals, is decided.
However, Roman god-like status aside, Totti has a particular significance to Italian football. He is arguably the last in the country's long line of exceptional fantasisti.
An Italian term that describes a skilful attacking player usually positioned ahead of the midfield and behind the centre-forward, a fantasista is more often than not the number 10. Someone who adds glamour to a team. A habitual goalscorer but also a creative spark. All grace and elegance, you know the sort.
Well, since the days of the gladiators and the Roman Empire, Italy have produced these players in abundance. From Mario Corso to Roberto Baggio, Sandro Mazzola to Gianfranco Zola, the peninsula has proved fertile breeding ground for the fantasisti.
But now, more than two decades after he made his Roma debut, Totti acts as a lone flag-bearer for the dying fantasisti dynasty. His enduring presence at the Stadio Olimpico is one of the last and possibly the best example of the great Italian entertainers.
Totti possesses all of the luxurious qualities required to be considered a stellar fantasista.
Tricks, pace and vision are complemented by strength and determination culminating in the ultimate stylised attacking player.
With an inclination to start attacks from deep, the sight of Totti controlling the ball on the halfway line, turning and pinging a pass up the pitch has become routine in Serie A. As have sublime free-kicks and mazy dribbling.
Still, the play he would most become associated with is the lobbed shot. Panenka penalties to 30- yard screamers. Drawing upon his supreme vision and outrageous selfassurance, the Totti lob has been a goalkeeper’s worst nightmare for the best part of two decades.
Cruyff had his turn, Ronaldo the stepover and Totti the lob.
Born in San Giovanni in the centre of Rome, Totti's career is the stuff of boyhood fantasy. Making his first appearance for Roma in 1992 at just 16 years old, Totti adapted fast to life as a professional footballer.
He became the youngest ever Serie A club captain at the age of 22. It would be the first in a colossus list of individual records including: all-time Roma appearances and all-time Roma goals.
Nonetheless, Roma have always struggled to compete against Italy's northern giants, Milan, Inter and Juve.
Silverware has not come cheaply. Yet still, Rome's golden boy managed to bag the 2001 Scudetto and two Coppa Italias in 2007 and 2008.
Along with Maldini, Totti is a glowing example of Italian one-clubmanship. And Roma's official website thinks so too, gushing, “Roma's number ten is without question the best player in the club's history.”
It is a statement few would argue with. Unlike Maldini, Totti has played for a club never quite considered as one of the continent’s elite. Offers to join the Galacticos in Madrid have come in but were never taken up and Totti's love for Roma has never wavered.
Lazio fans, on the other hand, have never really warmed to their city rivals' star man. In particular, two derby day celebrations have put him firmly in
I Biancocelesti's bad book. A victory for Roma in a 1999 derby saw Francesco reveal a shirt reading 'vi ho purgato ancora' or 'I have purged you again guys'. As you would expect, Lazio fans weren't too thrilled with Totti's boast so, when again, last year the Roma captain unveiled a shirt mocking Lazio's defeat Totti-Lazio relations hit an all-time low. Not that he'll care, 11 goals make Totti the Rome derby's all-time leading scorer. Such arrogant claims and a bad temper make the Roman fantasista a controversial figure throughout Italy and this is perhaps reflected in his relationship with the national team. Handed his Azzurri debut by legendary goalkeeper Dino Zoff in 1998, Totti would go on to be an important member of the national set-up. A famous Panenka penalty against hosts Holland at Euro 2000 put Italy into the final. It would not be Italy's year, the French won the game in extra-time, although Totti was awarded man of the match. Overall, the Roma man picked up 58 caps for his country, not a bad haul but not reflective of his limitless talents. In a conundrum similar to the Lampard or Gerrard situation in England, Totti's place in the national eleven was contested by fellow fantasista Alessandro Del Piero. The two most talented Italians of their generation limited by each other’s brilliance. And still, both would play vital roles in Italy's 2006 World Cup victory. After replacing Del Piero midway through the second half of a secondround tie with Australia, Totti was
on hand to despatch a stoppage time penalty, firing the Azzurri into the quarter-finals.
The final against France in Berlin would be his last for Italy, a turbulent international career complete after winning the greatest prize of all.
As you might expect, Francesco Totti's life has been as extravagant off the pitch as it has on it. Never one for subtlety, in an interview with La Gazzetta dello Sport the Roma captain bizarrely divulged that he had lost his virginity to a 17-year-old girl at the tender age of 12.
Film star good looks and bad boy swagger, he's always been fairly popular with his female namesake and had the Italian tabloids obsessing over a number of high profile relationships.
Alas, finally in 2005 and more Beckham than Beckham, Francesco married celebrity showgirl Ilary Blasi in a ceremony broadcast live and in full by Sky Italia.
At the time of writing, Roma are claiming to have offered their captain another year on the books, a late run of form enough to persuade the powers-that-be in Rome that, even in middle age, Totti's genius and passion can not and will not ever be replicated at the Stadio Olimpico.
However, sooner or later the curtain will come down on Totti's career and Italian football will be left yearning for the days of the great fantasista.
With Del Piero long gone, Antonio Cassano's career slowly ebbing away and Antonio Di Natale all played out, Italian football will need to search long and hard for an heir to the fantasisti throne.
Lorenzo Insigne of Napoli has shown signs of promise and Stephan El Shaarawy, currently on loan at Roma from AC Milan, looks to be back on course after flopping at Monaco.
Both are players with clear talent but neither blessed with the audacity and prowess of King Francesco.