Football Italia
Encyclopedia
Football Italia is an Italian football
programme in the United Kingdom
, known as Football Italiano for its final season. The first broadcasting of the show was in 1992 on Channel 4
, the show is centered around live coverage of Serie A
football, the top flight in the Italian league system. James Richardson
presented the show for a large part of its existence.
The first live match shown was between Sampdoria
and Lazio
, on 6 September 1992, it ended in a 3–3 draw and drew 3 million viewers. In August 2005 the programme moved to Bravo, where it showed one season and a half, before moving to Setanta Sports
. Five owned the rights for the 2007/08 season: 26 August 2007 was the exact return date of the show, and the show was broadcasted weekly from 1:30pm Sunday afternoon GMT. The show's end was announced on 27 June 2008, on the Football Italiano website. The message, posted by James Sugure, read: "Unfortunately it is now unlikely that Five will be continuing their Football Italiano television coverage of Serie A for the 2008-09 season. As a result, this website will now be suspended until further notice. On behalf of all the team here at Football Italiano I would like thank you for your support over the last year."
taking live English top-flight football off terrestrial television, the transfer of England's best player, Paul Gascoigne
, to Lazio and the success of C4's Welsh brother S4C
's European football programme, Sgorio
, an idea C4 had passed on a few years earlier. There was a significant difference in quality between Italian and English football that had appeared after England's ban from European competition for unruly behaviour of its fans. Italian clubs paid much higher transfer fees than their English counterparts, and many of the world's best players played in Serie A.
first brought live Italian football to a small number of British homes with squarial
s in 1990, when it showed live games on The Sports Channel. Soon, BSB was officially merged with (in reality taken over by) Sky, which showed Italian games in the early days of Sky Sports
, but when the Premier League came into being, Sky now had live top-flight English football every week of the season, and dropped Serie A - which is where Channel 4 came in, partially inspired by a conversation with Paul Gascoigne who had regretted that most British viewers would not be able to see his club games.
sold its live rights to Sky Sports with the BBC buying the highlights to herald the return of Match of the Day
every Saturday night, while ITV claimed the lower divisions and the new Champions League. All of which meant a gap on Sunday afternoons for live football on terrestrial television.
Chrysalis and Paul had done Gascoigne – The Fightback [a documentary about the player's return from injury] together. And Paul said that it was a shame that nobody would be able to see his games. So Chryalis asked the Italian Federation, who said that they couldn’t show just Lazio’s games, but they could cover the whole league if they put in a bid.
The network had only briefly shown football beforehand. Martin Tyler
had reported on the 1983 Brazilian Cup Final, while in 1985, Channel 4 carried ITV’s live coverage of a World Cup qualifier between Australia and Scotland.
So, having paid £1.5m for the rights to Serie A, on 6 September 1992, C4 transmitted its first live Italian match – Sampdoria v Lazio. Gascoigne might have still been injured, but a healthy three million people still tuned in. Veteran broadcaster Kenneth Wolstenholme
linked off screen, and Peter Brackley
and Paul Elliott commentated.
In its original incarnation, Football Italia consisted of two programmes: Gazzetta, a Saturday-morning programme (voiced by Kenneth Wolstenholme), and a live match on Sunday afternoon (commentated by Peter Brackley). Gazzetta contained all the highlights of the previous week's matches and an instalment on Italian culture. The former would also consist of interviews with players, especially Gazza, often as they walked around a chosen city. These were often very funny, such as when Richardson performed the Lambada
with Attilio Lombardo
. One of the most famous aspects of the programme was Richardson's going through the Italian newspapers in the sunshine, outside a café, explaining the football news to the British audience. During the last series, which was broadcast in the early hours of the morning, Richardson sat at a café outside the Pantheon
, usually in front of a large ice cream or dessert, and a proportion of each course would vanish between each set of match highlights.
For the 2000/2001 season the Sunday afternoon live games became more infrequent. The most telling sign came when Channel 4 abandoned coverage of the title decider in 2001 with seven minutes remaining, the match having been disrupted by a pitch invasion by the celebrating Roma fans. Just 12 months earlier Channel 4 had happily rearranged the schedules when Juventus’ title bid was held up by a rainstorm with Peter Brackley switching between matches. The following season live coverage was abandoned altogether.
signed a joint deal, taking them through to the end of the 2006–07 season. Poor viewing figures on Bravo saw them announce they would not be showing any matches after 23 December 2006. Some speculate that this was because of the absence of the league's most decorated team, Juventus
, who were relegated in the aftermath of the 2006 Serie A scandal
.
season, giving them the rights to air highlights and live games. It meant a return for the show to terrestrial television, where the live games were aired at the old 1:30p.m Sunday afternoon spot like it was originally.
Under the new name of Football Italiano the show was presented by Mark Chapman
and Laura Esposto
. The first game shown was a 1–1 draw between Inter Milan
and Udinese
on Sunday, 26 August 2007 with John Barnes
and Tony Jones
as the commentators.
The opening theme song in this version of the show was Phantom pt. II by Justice
.
On 27 June 2008, it was reported on the Football Italiano site that it looked likely that Five would not be continuing with their television coverage of Serie A for the 2008-09 season. As a result the Football Italiano website was suspended.
. Since the 2009/10 season, coverage of Serie A has been on ESPN. They show three live games per week during the Serie A season. ESPN do not however use the Football Italia title for their programmes.
At its peak in the 1990s, Football Italia attracted over 3 million viewers, and remains the most watched programme in the UK about a non-British domestic football league. In particular, presenter James Richardson
was popular for both his humour, and his ability to avoid many of the cliche
s of football presenting. Since Football Italia launched, a number of other European domestic leagues have now been broadcast on British television. Ultimately, the series' popularity fell as Italian football slipped behind first Spanish and then English in the UEFA Coefficients
and the perceived level of quality. In particular, the end of the show coincided with the 2006 Italian football scandal, and a loss in reputation for Italian club football.
for a word it features at the start and at the end of each show. Commonly fans in the United Kingdom
misinterpreted the word as "Goal Lazio
"; the term is actually Golaccio! which translated roughly as "Goaltastic!".
Although the word itself is not Italian, it does come from footballer José Altafini
, a Brazil
ian who played in Serie A
for AC Milan
, Napoli and Juventus. Since retiring from the game, Altafini became a commentator in Italy and would use the word to describe a particularly beautiful goal. It is said to be his actual voice in the soundclip. However, the fact that the -accio suffix in Italian actually represents a kind of negative alteration. seems to conflict with the sense of the Portuguese term golazo, meaning a great goal.
Click on the link below to hear it:
I'm Stronger Now (7" Edit)
Five: 2007–08
Bravo/Setanta Sports: 2005–06, 2006–07
British Eurosport: Midway through 2002–03, 2003–04, 2004–05
Channel 4: 1992–93, 1993–94, 1994–95, 1995–96, 1996–97, 1997–98, 1998–99, 1999–00, 2000–01, 2001–02
BSB/Sky: 1990-91, 1991-92
S4C: 1988-89, 1989-90
Football in Italy
Football is the most popular sport in Italy. The Italian national football team has won the FIFA World Cup 4 times , trailing only Brazil . Italy's club sides have won 27 major European trophies, making them the most successful European nation in the subject of football...
programme in the United Kingdom
United Kingdom
The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages...
, known as Football Italiano for its final season. The first broadcasting of the show was in 1992 on Channel 4
Channel 4
Channel 4 is a British public-service television broadcaster which began working on 2 November 1982. Although largely commercially self-funded, it is ultimately publicly owned; originally a subsidiary of the Independent Broadcasting Authority , the station is now owned and operated by the Channel...
, the show is centered around live coverage of Serie A
Serie A
Serie A , now called Serie A TIM due to sponsorship by Telecom Italia, is a professional league competition for football clubs located at the top of the Italian football league system and has been operating for over eighty years since 1929. It had been organized by Lega Calcio until 2010, but a new...
football, the top flight in the Italian league system. James Richardson
James Richardson (television presenter)
James "AC Jimbo" Richardson is a television presenter and journalist. He is best known as a former presenter of Channel 4's Football Italia programme and co-presenter of Setanta Sports' The Friday Football Show and Football Matters...
presented the show for a large part of its existence.
The first live match shown was between Sampdoria
U.C. Sampdoria
Unione Calcio Sampdoria is an Italian association football club based in Genoa. The club was formed in 1946 from the merger of two existing sports clubs whose roots can be traced back to the 1890s, Sampierdarenese and Andrea Doria...
and Lazio
S.S. Lazio
Società Sportiva Lazio, commonly referred to as Lazio, is a professional Italian football club based in Rome. The team, founded in 1900, play in the Serie A and have spent most of their history in the top tier of Italian football...
, on 6 September 1992, it ended in a 3–3 draw and drew 3 million viewers. In August 2005 the programme moved to Bravo, where it showed one season and a half, before moving to Setanta Sports
Setanta Sports
Setanta Sports is an international sports broadcaster based in Dublin, Ireland. Setanta Sports was formed in 1990 to facilitate the broadcasting of Irish sporting events...
. Five owned the rights for the 2007/08 season: 26 August 2007 was the exact return date of the show, and the show was broadcasted weekly from 1:30pm Sunday afternoon GMT. The show's end was announced on 27 June 2008, on the Football Italiano website. The message, posted by James Sugure, read: "Unfortunately it is now unlikely that Five will be continuing their Football Italiano television coverage of Serie A for the 2008-09 season. As a result, this website will now be suspended until further notice. On behalf of all the team here at Football Italiano I would like thank you for your support over the last year."
History
Football Italia started as a result of three factors: SkyBritish Sky Broadcasting
British Sky Broadcasting Group plc is a satellite broadcasting, broadband and telephony services company headquartered in London, United Kingdom, with operations in the United Kingdom and the Ireland....
taking live English top-flight football off terrestrial television, the transfer of England's best player, Paul Gascoigne
Paul Gascoigne
Paul John Gascoigne , commonly referred to as Gazza, is a retired English professional footballer.Playing in the position of midfield, Gascoigne's career included spells at Newcastle United, Tottenham Hotspur, Lazio, Rangers, Middlesbrough, Everton and Gansu Tianma, where he scored at least a goal...
, to Lazio and the success of C4's Welsh brother S4C
S4C
S4C , currently branded as S4/C, is a Welsh television channel broadcast from the capital, Cardiff. The first television channel to be aimed specifically at a Welsh-speaking audience, it is the fifth oldest British television channel .The channel - initially broadcast on...
's European football programme, Sgorio
Sgorio
Sgorio is a Welsh football television programme broadcast in Wales on S4C and produced by Rondo Media. It is currently presented by Nic Parry...
, an idea C4 had passed on a few years earlier. There was a significant difference in quality between Italian and English football that had appeared after England's ban from European competition for unruly behaviour of its fans. Italian clubs paid much higher transfer fees than their English counterparts, and many of the world's best players played in Serie A.
BSB/Sky
British Satellite BroadcastingBritish Satellite Broadcasting
British Satellite Broadcasting was a British television company which provided direct broadcast satellite television services to the United Kingdom...
first brought live Italian football to a small number of British homes with squarial
Squarial
The Squarial was a satellite antenna used for reception of the now defunct British Satellite Broadcasting television service. The Squarial was a flat plate satellite antenna, built to be unobtrusive and unique. BSB were counting on the form factor of the antenna to clearly differentiate themselves...
s in 1990, when it showed live games on The Sports Channel. Soon, BSB was officially merged with (in reality taken over by) Sky, which showed Italian games in the early days of Sky Sports
Sky Sports
Sky Sports is the brand name for a group of sports-oriented television channels operated by the UK and Ireland's main satellite pay-TV company, British Sky Broadcasting. Sky Sports is the dominant subscription television sports brand in the United Kingdom and Ireland...
, but when the Premier League came into being, Sky now had live top-flight English football every week of the season, and dropped Serie A - which is where Channel 4 came in, partially inspired by a conversation with Paul Gascoigne who had regretted that most British viewers would not be able to see his club games.
Channel 4
In 1992 came the most seismic shift in the history of televised sport in Britain. The newly formed FA Premier LeagueFA Premier League
The Premier League is an English professional league for association football clubs. At the top of the English football league system, it is the country's primary football competition. Contested by 20 clubs, it operates on a system of promotion and relegation with The Football League. The Premier...
sold its live rights to Sky Sports with the BBC buying the highlights to herald the return of Match of the Day
Match of the Day
Match of the Day is the BBC's main football television programme. Typically, it is shown on BBC One on Saturday evenings during the English football season, showing highlights of the day's matches in English football's top division, the Premier League...
every Saturday night, while ITV claimed the lower divisions and the new Champions League. All of which meant a gap on Sunday afternoons for live football on terrestrial television.
Chrysalis and Paul had done Gascoigne – The Fightback [a documentary about the player's return from injury] together. And Paul said that it was a shame that nobody would be able to see his games. So Chryalis asked the Italian Federation, who said that they couldn’t show just Lazio’s games, but they could cover the whole league if they put in a bid.
The network had only briefly shown football beforehand. Martin Tyler
Martin Tyler
Martin Tyler is an English football commentator who was voted as the FA Premier League Commentator of The Decade...
had reported on the 1983 Brazilian Cup Final, while in 1985, Channel 4 carried ITV’s live coverage of a World Cup qualifier between Australia and Scotland.
So, having paid £1.5m for the rights to Serie A, on 6 September 1992, C4 transmitted its first live Italian match – Sampdoria v Lazio. Gascoigne might have still been injured, but a healthy three million people still tuned in. Veteran broadcaster Kenneth Wolstenholme
Kenneth Wolstenholme
Kenneth Wolstenholme DFC & Bar was the football commentator for BBC television in the 1950s and 1960s, most notable for his commentary during the 1966 FIFA World Cup which included the famous phrase "some people are on the pitch...they think it's all over....it is now!", as Geoff Hurst scored...
linked off screen, and Peter Brackley
Peter Brackley
Peter Brackley is a football commentator, perhaps most famous for covering Football Italia on Channel 4 in the 1990s and formerly commentating for the computer game series Pro Evolution Soccer, and for Michael Owen's World League Soccer '99.-Radio:...
and Paul Elliott commentated.
In its original incarnation, Football Italia consisted of two programmes: Gazzetta, a Saturday-morning programme (voiced by Kenneth Wolstenholme), and a live match on Sunday afternoon (commentated by Peter Brackley). Gazzetta contained all the highlights of the previous week's matches and an instalment on Italian culture. The former would also consist of interviews with players, especially Gazza, often as they walked around a chosen city. These were often very funny, such as when Richardson performed the Lambada
Lambada
Lambada is a dance from Pará, Brazil. The dance became internationally popular in the 1980s, especially in Latin America and Caribbean countries...
with Attilio Lombardo
Attilio Lombardo
Attilio Lombardo is a retired football player turned manager.-Playing:...
. One of the most famous aspects of the programme was Richardson's going through the Italian newspapers in the sunshine, outside a café, explaining the football news to the British audience. During the last series, which was broadcast in the early hours of the morning, Richardson sat at a café outside the Pantheon
Pantheon, Rome
The Pantheon ,Rarely Pantheum. This appears in Pliny's Natural History in describing this edifice: Agrippae Pantheum decoravit Diogenes Atheniensis; in columnis templi eius Caryatides probantur inter pauca operum, sicut in fastigio posita signa, sed propter altitudinem loci minus celebrata.from ,...
, usually in front of a large ice cream or dessert, and a proportion of each course would vanish between each set of match highlights.
For the 2000/2001 season the Sunday afternoon live games became more infrequent. The most telling sign came when Channel 4 abandoned coverage of the title decider in 2001 with seven minutes remaining, the match having been disrupted by a pitch invasion by the celebrating Roma fans. Just 12 months earlier Channel 4 had happily rearranged the schedules when Juventus’ title bid was held up by a rainstorm with Peter Brackley switching between matches. The following season live coverage was abandoned altogether.
Eurosport
After Channel 4 dropped Italian football; British Eurosport bought the Serie A rights from the middle of the 2002–03 season and held onto the rights until 2005.Bravo and Setanta
Bravo and Setanta SportsSetanta Sports
Setanta Sports is an international sports broadcaster based in Dublin, Ireland. Setanta Sports was formed in 1990 to facilitate the broadcasting of Irish sporting events...
signed a joint deal, taking them through to the end of the 2006–07 season. Poor viewing figures on Bravo saw them announce they would not be showing any matches after 23 December 2006. Some speculate that this was because of the absence of the league's most decorated team, Juventus
Juventus F.C.
Juventus Football Club S.p.A. , commonly referred to as Juventus and colloquially as Juve , are a professional Italian association football club based in Turin, Piedmont...
, who were relegated in the aftermath of the 2006 Serie A scandal
2006 Serie A scandal
The 2006 Italian football scandal involved Italy's top professional football leagues, Serie A and Serie B...
.
Five
Five gained the rights to broadcast Serie A from the 2007–08Serie A 2007-08
The 2007-08 Serie A football season was the seventy-sixth since its establishment, and started on August 26, 2007 and ended on May 18, 2008. Internazionale successfully defended the championship on the final day of the season, finishing first with 85 points, three ahead of Roma.-Plusvalenze...
season, giving them the rights to air highlights and live games. It meant a return for the show to terrestrial television, where the live games were aired at the old 1:30p.m Sunday afternoon spot like it was originally.
Under the new name of Football Italiano the show was presented by Mark Chapman
Mark Chapman (DJ)
Andrew Mark "Chappers" Chapman , also known as Chappers, is the main sports presenter on Radio 5 Live as well as presenting for BBC Sport on television, his mother is Emily Chapman and his father is Peter Chapman.He was the sports newsreader and Mills' sidekick on The Scott Mills Show on BBC Radio...
and Laura Esposto
Laura Esposto
Laura Esposto is a television presenter, model and singer.She was recently a football presenter for Five in the United Kingdom for Serie A games during the 2007/08 season....
. The first game shown was a 1–1 draw between Inter Milan
F.C. Internazionale Milano
Football Club Internazionale Milano, often referred to as Internazionale or simply Inter, is a professional Italian football club based in Milan, Italy. Outside Italy, the club is often called Inter Milan. They are the reigning FIFA Club World champions and Coppa Italia holders.Inter have always...
and Udinese
Udinese Calcio
Udinese Calcio is an Italian football club based in Udine, Friuli-Venezia Giulia, and currently plays in the Serie A. Founded in 1896, Udinese is the second oldest club in the Serie A, after Genoa....
on Sunday, 26 August 2007 with John Barnes
John Barnes (footballer)
John Charles Bryan Barnes MBE is an English football manager and former player.During his playing career, Barnes had successful periods at Watford and Liverpool in the 1980s and 1990s, winning the First Division twice, the FA Cup twice, and playing for England 79 times...
and Tony Jones
Tony Jones (football reporter)
Tony Jones is a football broadcaster based in England. He has contributed to all the commercial UK broadcasting outlets - Sky Sports, five, Channel 4 and ITV - commentating on everything from the UEFA Champions League to the English non-League.He was part of the Hostbroadcastservices team at...
as the commentators.
The opening theme song in this version of the show was Phantom pt. II by Justice
Justice (French band)
Justice is a French electronic music duo consisting of Gaspard Augé and Xavier de Rosnay . The duo is one of the most successful groups on Ed Banger Records and is managed by the label's head, Pedro Winter...
.
On 27 June 2008, it was reported on the Football Italiano site that it looked likely that Five would not be continuing with their television coverage of Serie A for the 2008-09 season. As a result the Football Italiano website was suspended.
Legacy
Italian football was absent from British TV for the 2008-09 season, other than live coverage of the Milan derby on BBC ThreeBBC Three
BBC Three is a television network from the BBC broadcasting via digital cable, terrestrial, IPTV and satellite platforms. The channel's target audience includes those in the 16-34 year old age group, and has the purpose of providing "innovative" content to younger audiences, focusing on new talent...
. Since the 2009/10 season, coverage of Serie A has been on ESPN. They show three live games per week during the Serie A season. ESPN do not however use the Football Italia title for their programmes.
At its peak in the 1990s, Football Italia attracted over 3 million viewers, and remains the most watched programme in the UK about a non-British domestic football league. In particular, presenter James Richardson
James Richardson (television presenter)
James "AC Jimbo" Richardson is a television presenter and journalist. He is best known as a former presenter of Channel 4's Football Italia programme and co-presenter of Setanta Sports' The Friday Football Show and Football Matters...
was popular for both his humour, and his ability to avoid many of the cliche
Cliché
A cliché or cliche is an expression, idea, or element of an artistic work which has been overused to the point of losing its original meaning or effect, especially when at some earlier time it was considered meaningful or novel. In phraseology, the term has taken on a more technical meaning,...
s of football presenting. Since Football Italia launched, a number of other European domestic leagues have now been broadcast on British television. Ultimately, the series' popularity fell as Italian football slipped behind first Spanish and then English in the UEFA Coefficients
UEFA coefficients
In European football, the UEFA coefficients are statistics used for ranking and seeding teams in club and international competitions.The coefficients are calculated by UEFA, who administer football within Europe...
and the perceived level of quality. In particular, the end of the show coincided with the 2006 Italian football scandal, and a loss in reputation for Italian club football.
Golaccio!
The show became well known in popular culturePopular culture
Popular culture is the totality of ideas, perspectives, attitudes, memes, images and other phenomena that are deemed preferred per an informal consensus within the mainstream of a given culture, especially Western culture of the early to mid 20th century and the emerging global mainstream of the...
for a word it features at the start and at the end of each show. Commonly fans in the United Kingdom
United Kingdom
The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages...
misinterpreted the word as "Goal Lazio
S.S. Lazio
Società Sportiva Lazio, commonly referred to as Lazio, is a professional Italian football club based in Rome. The team, founded in 1900, play in the Serie A and have spent most of their history in the top tier of Italian football...
"; the term is actually Golaccio! which translated roughly as "Goaltastic!".
Although the word itself is not Italian, it does come from footballer José Altafini
José Altafini
José João Altafini, is an Italian Brazilian former footballer. He is the joint-third highest scorer in Italian Serie A history with 216 goals. He currently holds the record for the highest no...
, a Brazil
Brazil
Brazil , officially the Federative Republic of Brazil , is the largest country in South America. It is the world's fifth largest country, both by geographical area and by population with over 192 million people...
ian who played in Serie A
Serie A
Serie A , now called Serie A TIM due to sponsorship by Telecom Italia, is a professional league competition for football clubs located at the top of the Italian football league system and has been operating for over eighty years since 1929. It had been organized by Lega Calcio until 2010, but a new...
for AC Milan
A.C. Milan
Associazione Calcio Milan, commonly referred to as A.C. Milan or simply Milan , is a professional Italian football club based in Milan, Lombardy, that plays in the Serie A. Milan was founded in 1899 by English lace-maker Herbert Kilpin and businessman Alfred Edwards among others...
, Napoli and Juventus. Since retiring from the game, Altafini became a commentator in Italy and would use the word to describe a particularly beautiful goal. It is said to be his actual voice in the soundclip. However, the fact that the -accio suffix in Italian actually represents a kind of negative alteration. seems to conflict with the sense of the Portuguese term golazo, meaning a great goal.
The Theme Tune
The theme tune to the show - which became a classic of its genre - later became a track called "I'm Stronger Now" (the theme was written first, the vocal version followed) which was performed by Definitive Two and released on the Deconstruction label in 1992. Four tracks were released together but it is the 7" Edit version that is closest to the theme tune. The track was written by Ben Chapman and Steve Duberry who adapted the track from the original theme tune, the most notable difference being the omission of the famous "Golaccio" chant which is probably what the show is best remembered for.Click on the link below to hear it:
I'm Stronger Now (7" Edit)
Channels featured on
Football Italia has been shown on the following channels throughout its history:Five: 2007–08
Bravo/Setanta Sports: 2005–06, 2006–07
British Eurosport: Midway through 2002–03, 2003–04, 2004–05
Channel 4: 1992–93, 1993–94, 1994–95, 1995–96, 1996–97, 1997–98, 1998–99, 1999–00, 2000–01, 2001–02
BSB/Sky: 1990-91, 1991-92
S4C: 1988-89, 1989-90