Veni, Vidi, Vici

When Italian Football Ruled Europe

Dominic Hougham

• Publisher: Pitch Publishing
• eBook ISBN:
  9781836801146
• Year: 2025

A celebration of the late 1980s and 90s, when Italian football dominated Europe. This book is a must-read for anyone who experienced Italian football through Channel 4's groundbreaking 1990s coverage.
It was an era when ten different Italian teams played in major European finals, when the greatest players strutted their stuff in Italy's stadiums, cheered on by colourful fans with flares and tifos. Inside you'll read about:

• The effect the Heysel disaster had on European football, including Italian football's relative weakness before Heysel
• The turbulent times of Maradona at Napoli, including his and Italy's experiences at Italia '90
• The influx of foreign talent into Italian football, including the Dutch trio as part of Sacchi's Milan revolution and three Germans at Inter
• The dominance of Italian clubs in Europe, including the likes of Sampdoria, Torino, Roma, Fiorentina, Lazio and Parma alongside Napoli, Milan, Inter and Juventus

This evocative book will take those who remember the era on a nostalgic journey through Italian splendour, while those who don't will wish they had been there. It was a time when Italian football was the ultimate in cool.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction
• 1. Hanot’s Brainchild
• 2. Rule Britannia!
• 3. The Old Lady Rises
• 4. The Heysel Disaster
• 5. An Argentine in Napoli
• 6. Italia ’90
• 7. The Shoe Salesman from Fusignano
• 8. The Greatest Serie A Game of the Era?
• 9. Il Divin Codino
• 10. Trap and the Tre Tedeschi
• 11. Mondonico’s Chair
• 12. Roma and Il Tedesco Volante
• 13. Sixty-one Days of Madness
• 14. A Geordie’s Roman Odyssey
• 15. Golazo!
• 16. Gli Invincibili
• 17. The Old Lady Awakens
• 18. Prosciutto, Parmigiano and Parmalat
• 19. USA ’94
• 20. The Old Lady Soars
• 21. Moratti and O Fenômeno
• 22. ‘It Was Like Living in a Foreign Country’
• 23. The Final Season
• 24. The Facts and Nothing but the Facts
• 25. The Fall of the Italian Empire
• Photos