The fairytale of Serie A

Sampdoria's only Scudetto, inspired by Gianluca Vialli, was an underdog story full of humanity, charm, style and most of all fun

The fairytale of Serie A

When a club wins the league for the first time, their players don't just get a winners’ medal; they also receive an invisible badge of immortality and unconditional love from their supporters.

Such events are becoming increasingly rare – the pool of sides who might credibly win their first title gets smaller all the time, especially given the economic imbalance of modern football. Since the game changed forever in 1992, with the advent of the Champions League and the Premier League, only four sides from Europe's big four leagues have won their inaugural title: Deportivo La Coruna, Wolfsburg, Leicester City and Bayer Leverkusen. (Given no French team has won a European competition since 1995-96, we're not having this big five nonsense.)

There have been some in other leagues in that time – the list includes Lyon, who enjoyed the experience so much that they won the next six titles as well – but the relative status of those leagues are such that the achievement, though still unforgettable, does not have the same reach and is unlikely to be the subject of nostalgic reflection in a different country over 30 years later.

It's hard to foresee the next team in those four leagues to break virgin territory – and there's a fair chance that whoever does will be bankrolled from afar, which kind of defeats the object. Money can't buy me love and all that; in football, it can’t buy romance either.

There was romance by the bucketload in 1990-91, when the provincial side Sampdoria won their only Scudetto. It was a story of humanity, charm, style and most of all fun. It wasn't just that they won Serie A. They won it at a time when Serie A was as strong as any domestic league has ever been, and they won it with minimal input from their foreign players – who at the time were supposed to be every team’s trump cards. It was a homegrown, homespun triumph, impossible to repeat.

“I've won things in my life, but that Scudetto with Samp is the best and sweetest,” said their coach Vujadin Boskov. “Because I won it in the most difficult and evenly matched championship in the world and because it was for the first for a club that had yet to reach fifty years of existence. It's a bit like when your first child is born.”

At Sampdoria, Boskov was not so much a father figure as an eccentric uncle or grandfather: he was known as Nonno Vujadin (Grandpa Vujadin). He became famous in Italy for his strange phrases.

  • “In order to win a match, you must score the most goals”
  • “It is better to lose a game 6-0 than to lose six matches 1-0”
  • “A player must keep his eyes on the ball, and his other two on his opponent”

Boskov also said that if he unleashed his dog, it would play better than the Uruguayan midfielder Jose Perdomo, an expensive flop at Samp’s rivals Genoa in 1989-90.

Such sayings made him seem a little simple. He was anything but, and as a coach he managed the trickiest of balances: retaining authority while giving his players freedom and input. Sometimes Roberto Mancini even did the team-talks. “Boskov was first and foremost a psychologist, before being a team manager,” said Paolo Borea, the Sampdoria director of football in Boskov’s reign, in the book Roberto Mancini: A Footballing Life. “He had a way with players; he could get the most out of them.”

Boskov travelled Europe in his managerial career and became known as the “Gypsy Rover”. He managed 11 clubs in his time, including Real Madrid – where he won La Liga and the Copa del Rey in 1979-80 – Roma, Napoli and Feyenoord, as well as Yugoslavia on a couple of occasions. But nothing stirred his soul like the events of 19 May 1991, when the blue half of the city of Genoa had its greatest party. The kind of party where you want to wake up with a raging hangover, to do justice to what happened the day and night before.

When the left-back Beppe Dossena was interviewed on the pitch after the game, a group of players deliriously soaked him and the TV interviewer in champagne. There was a massive pitch invasion, yet nobody seemed bothered. This was not a day to be worried about health and safety. The only danger was that somebody might die of joy. 

Winning a trophy, any trophy, is a joyous occasion, the whole point of sport. But few have matched the scene in the Stadio Luigi Ferraris when Sampdoria beat Lecce 3-0 to win Serie A. There were no studied poses, no cynicism or entitlement, just pharmaceutical-grade happiness. Everyone – players, fans, directors – were emotionally naked. Some were physically almost naked.

There were grown men cavorting deliriously wearing nothing but their grundies – and that was the Sampdoria players. Gianluca Vialli, the undisputed star of Sampdoria’s season, helped carry an Italy flag around the ground while wearing only the skimpiest white Y-fronts. Moreno Mannini, the defender whose amazing goal earlier that day ignited the title party, had just underpants and a Sampdoria scarf wrapped around his waist. It was one of the few bits of immodesty from Samp all season.

When the left-back Beppe Dossena was interviewed on the pitch after the game, a group of players deliriously soaked him and the TV interviewer in champagne. There was a massive pitch invasion, yet nobody seemed bothered. This was not a day to be worried about health and safety. The only danger was that somebody might die of joy. 

There was – still is - a sweet disbelief that Sampdoria managed to win Serie A. It was a huge leap for them to enter the top three, never mind win the league. Although they were part of the Serie A furniture, they had never before finished higher than fourth. The club was founded in 1946, a fusion of two clubs – Andrea Doria and Sampierdarenese. In 1979 they were bought by the oil businessman Paolo Mantovani, who was a paternal influence on the players and would become synonymous with Sampdoria's golden age. At the time they were in Serie B, having been relegated in 1977, but Mantovani had the most ambitious vision for the club.

They slowly improved throughout the eighties, winning three Coppas Italia (their first ever major trophies, excluding Serie B); and in 1990 they beat Anderlecht 2-0 in the final to win the Cup Winners' Cup. They had lost, a little portentously, to Barcelona in the final a year earlier. At the time, Sampdoria were a cup team, unable to produce such form consistently in the league. Their league places since returning to Serie A in 1982 were: 7th, 6th, 4th, 11th, 6th, 4th, 5th, 5th. They were good enough to beat anyone over a single game, but not over a 30-game season.

At least that’s what most people thought. Within the Sampdoria squad, there was a powerful belief that, with every season, they were moving closer to a magical achievement. Most of the senior players – particularly Vialli, Mancini and the brilliant defender Pietro Vierchowod – were the subject of regular, lucrative offers from the biggest clubs in Italy. So one day, the squad made a pact that nobody would leave until Sampdoria won the Scudetto. It was quite a conceit, as it could have been a career-long sentence. For those players, the Scudetto was somewhere between obsession and destiny.

When they were interviewed on the field after winning the title, many cited the long journey they had taken. “This is better,” said Vierchowod, “because we had to suffer for it.” For him and the rest there was an obvious that they had defined – even fulfilled – their careers. “At last,” said Mancini on the pitch, “I’ve removed the toad from my back.”

Mancini and Vialli were the centre of everything on and off the field. They were part of Snow White and the Seven Dwarves, a kind of Sampdoria Social Club who met every single Thursday night for dinner, cards and chit-chat. The group also included the defender Mannini, the director of football Borea, a couple of youth-team coaches, a supporter who owned the restaurant at which they ate (he was Snow White) and Sampdoria’s referee-liaison officer. Sometimes other players came along as well, and one night the president Mantovani turned up unannounced to clean everyone out at cards.

On the field Vialli and Mancini were known as I Gemelli del Gol: the Goal Twins. They were the best strike partnership in Italy and complemented each other perfectly: Vialli the charismatic, hard-running goalscorer, Mancini the scheming fantasista, one of those rare players who genuinely preferred an assist to a goal. "Mancini was a pain in the backside,” says Gianfranco Zola, who was making his way at Napoli in the early 1990s. “He was so good, so intelligent, so talented. He and Luca were very, very competitive."

The two were contrasting characters: Vialli was thoughtful and laid-back, Mancini passionate and temperamental. Despite or perhaps because of that, they got on extremely well. They lived very close each other, met socially on a regular basis and sometimes went on holiday with their partners.

The rest of the side were less well known. At the start of Sampdoria’s golden season, the keeper Gianluca Pagliuca and the balding winger Attilio Lombardo were highly promising, uncapped 24-year-olds. They fitted Mantovani’s policy of buying talented youngsters – Mancini and Vialli were both signed as teenagers – and moulding them into a powerful team as part of a long-term project. There were a couple of exceptions to that. Dossena and the inspirational Brazilian Toninho Cerezo were a pair of wise old owls who came to the club in their thirties. The leggy Cerezo was part of Brazil’s wonderful midfield at the 1982 World Cup but played his last international game in 1985. When he moved from Roma in 1986, most people outside the club thought Sampdoria was a retirement home for his career.

In those days Serie A clubs were limited to three foreign players. Sampdoria's were all midfielders: Srecko Katanec, Alexei Mikhailichenko and Cerezo. The overseas players' influence was relatively limited in Sampdoria's triumph. They started only three out of 34 league games together because of Cerezo's injuries and Mikhailichenko's struggle to win the favour of Boskov. But Katanec was a vital, underrated player and Cerezo – even when he wasn’t playing – became a totem who was adored by the fans and players. When he was playing, he was like Boskov’s manager on the field. “He said he was 31 when he joined Sampdoria but he was probably 44 already!” said Vialli. “But he got even better!”

As much as anything, Cerezo was a symbol of the sheer fun the Sampdoria players seemed to have. They were not naïve idiots who played for the sheer love of the game and didn’t mind if they won or lost, nor were they constantly smiling. Work was serious business, yet within that context their joie de vivre was hard to miss. The spirit of the side was unusually strong. “We were,” said Vialli, “the funniest team in the world.” The former Barcelona and Scotland forward Steve Archibald famously said that team spirit is “an illusion glimpsed in the aftermath of victory”. Had he played for Sampdoria, he might have had pause for thought. “They are a united family,” said Boskov after the Scudetto victory. “And this is our strength.”

They instinctively struck a near-perfect work/life balance. Crucially, any squabbles were quickly forgotten. “Mancini and I almost came to blows many a time,” said Vierchowod in Roberto Mancini: A Footballing Life. “Still, once the match ended we went for dinner that night, regardless of anything that had happened a few hours before. That was our strength.” The players enjoyed each other's company and knew they were part of something unique.

After winning the title, they all bleached their hair blond for the final match of the season at Lazio. They also went on stage, in full cock-rock attire, to sing a version of Europe's The Final Countdown, with those in attendance only realising who they were when the bald Lombardo’s wig fell off. Lombardo’s hair, or lack thereof, was a constant source of amusement. When the players were interviewed in the dressing-room after winning the title, Vialli – now naked apart from a towel - introduced a new signing called Cesare. It was, of course, Lombardo wearing a wig.

Fun was not a word you generally associated with Italian football at the time. The whole thing was so intense, so important, and watched with a fervour that made religion seem frivolous by comparison. No national league has ever been as strong as Serie A in the late 1980s and early 1990s. It had a monopoly on the world's best players and European football's major trophies. In the decade between 1989 and 1998, there was at least one Italian side in 18of the 20 European Cup and Uefa Cup finals. In 1990-91, Sampdoria's season of triumph, the roster of overseas players included Diego Maradona, Lothar Matthaus, Jurgen Klinsmann, Andreas Brehme, Marco Van Basten, Ruud Gullit, Frank Rikjaard, Rudi Voller, Diego Simeone, Thomas Hassler, Branco, Claudio Caniggia and Enzo Francescoli.

The majority of those were with the four title favourites. Maradona's Napoli were the reigning champions; Milan were the European champions; Inter had arguably the best three players from the world champions, West Germany, in Matthaus, Brehme and Klinsmann; and Juventus, under the new management of Gigi Maifredi, had broken the world record for Roberto Baggio, while also signing Julio Cesar and Hassler.

Sampdoria did not have foreign players to match and even their domestic stars were struggling. Vialli, the golden boy of Italian football going into Italia 90 the previous summer, had a disastrous World Cup. He was one of four Sampdoria players in the Italy squad. None would have especially happy memories: Mancini and Pagliuca did not play at all, while Vierchowod's only appearance came in the third-place play-off against England.

Outside the club, there was no sense that Sampdoria might infiltrate this top four in the early weeks of the 1990-91 Serie A campaign. Vialli, whose early-season injury added to the insult of a personally disastrous World Cup, was missing and without him Sampdoria scored only three goals in their first five games. That run did at least include a useful 0-0 draw away to Juventus. It turned out to be the only game against the fancied quartet of Napoli, Milan, Inter and Juventus that Sampdoria did not win that season.

The first victory against one of the favourites came at the end of October, when Sampdoria won 1-0 away to Milan through Cerezo's volley. The win put them top of the table for the first time since 1982. In their next away game, against the champions Napoli, Sampdoria were played off the park – and won 4-1. It was an astonishing smash-and-grab, which included a pair of technically perfect volleys from Vialli and Mancini that may never never been bettered by one team in one match. Zola, sat on the bench for Napoli that day, says Mancini’s was “one of the best goals I've ever seen”. It came after a typically devastating break from the speedy Lombardo, whose deep cross was smashed in off the post by Mancini.

The first defeat of the season came a week later, against their rivals Genoa, with Branco smashing a memorable free-kick to win the match. Even experienced title-winners generally have at least one blip, so it's inevitable for the first-timers, and the Genoa defeat was the start of a traumatic period for Sampdoria, who won just one of the next eight league games. Crucially, that win came in a famous match against Internazionale just after Christmas.

Vialli scored after 25 seconds but when Mikhailichenko was sent off after being suckered into an elbow by Giuseppe Bergomi, Sampdoria had to survive two-thirds of the match with 10 men. Nicola Berti equalised after half-time for Inter and then Aldo Serena – the best header of a ball in Italian football – thumped Matthaus's cross a fraction wide of the post. It was the season's great 'what-if' moment. Instead of going 2-1 down, Sampdoria stole the match with two goals in the last ten minutes: a nerveless penalty from Vialli and a third goal from Mancini after an almost demented surge out of defence by Vierchowod.

Sampdoria followed that match with consecutive defeats, at home to Torino and away to Lecce, and slipped to fourth at the start of January. It seemed the natural order was being reasserted, that Sampdoria were just a cup team – especially as they had faded from the title race in the second half of the season in the previous two years. In fact, the only matches they would lose for the rest of the season would be in the cups.

Marco Branca scored the only goal in consecutive wins against Cesena and Roma – the latter with only three minutes to go – to get the season back on track. Another eerily calm penalty from Vialli beat Juventus, who were starting to slip out of the race, and Sampdoria were off on a run of nine wins in ten games. In that period came an emphatic 2-0 victory at home to Milan.

Vialli completed a trinity of nerveless, second-half penalties at home to Internazionale, Juventus and Milan – all taken under huge pressure, and with the score level – although this time the creation of the penalty was as memorable as the goal. It came from a marvellous run by Mancini, who duped Franco Baresi and Paolo Maldini before being fouled.

Mancini, at his irresistible best, sealed the game with a beautiful, quick-witted goal on the counter-attack. And even though Vialli was the poster boy of Sampdoria’s title, it was Mancini who won the Guerin d’Oro: the award given at the end of each Serie A season to the player with the highest average rating throughout the season in the magazine Guerin Sportivo.

Another 4-1 win over Napoli – an authentic thrashing this time – in Maradona's last game in Serie A put Sampdoria three points clear. Vierchowod joined the list of unlikely heroes with the only goal at Roma, and Sampdoria held their three-point lead over Inter when, with four games to go, they visited San Siro at the state of May. They were about to take part in one of the most dramatic games in Serie A history.

Inter tore into Sampdoria right from the kick-off, when Serena charged after the ball like a feral dog. They had umpteen chances, but were constantly denied by saves ranging from good to stunning by Pagliuca. Klinsmann had a goal dubiously disallowed just before half-time, and then Mancini and Bergomi were harshly sent off for a theatrical but essentially minor spat. As they left the field, an Inter fan threw something at Mancini; it hit Bergomi on the head.

For Inter, it was that kind of day. After the break Alessandro Bianchi missed an open goal. Then, with Hitchcockian suddenness, Sampdoria – who had barely had a decent attack all match - scored on the break. Again it came from an unsung hero: Dossena, the 32-year-old, pinged one superbly from 20 yards. It was his first goal of the season.

Dossena's goal was the cue for Inter, impossibly, to go up a gear. But so did Sampdoria, who started to carry enormous menace on the counter-attack. It led to 20 of the most exhilarating minutes imaginable. Pagliuca saved Matthaus's penalty – the first Matthaus had missed for Inter – with the rebound hitting Matthaus before dribbling miserably wide. At the other end, during the same attack, Lombardo hit the post and Vialli had a shot improbably cleared off the line by the recovering Brehme. By now the English commentator Martin Tyler – a calm, authoritative figure – was in danger of losing his voice. “In years to come, people will be saying: I was here, I was at that game … Grown men, hardened football-watchers, are scarcely able to turn their eyes to this.”

Moments later Vialli sealed the match for Sampdoria, coolly going round Walter Zenga, who ran to the halfway line and almost manhandled the referee because of some perceived injustice. The game did not peter out. There were more saves from Pagliuca, who was then hit by objects thrown from the crowd. On and off the field, everything Inter threw at Pagliuca seemed to hit him.

A draw at Torino a week later kept Sampdoria on course, and they knew a victory at home to relegation-threatened Lecce in their penultimate game would give them the title. Cerezo, the totem, scored superbly after only two minutes, and when Mannini added a stunning long-range volley after 13 minutes not even the most fatalistic Sampdoria fan felt anything could go wrong. All it needed was the icing on the cake, a goal from Vialli. He obliged in the 30th minute with a superb shot on the turn, his 19th goal of the greatest season of his life. That tally came in only 26 games, an outrageous rate of scoring in that particular era of Serie A.

The rest of the game was one long pregasm. There is a scene in the Steven Soderbergh film Out Of Sight in which Jennifer Lopez and George Clooney flirt knowingly in a bar. They both realise what is going to happen but don’t rush upstairs, preferring to prolong the delicious anticipation. For Sampdoria, the final hour of the match against Lecce, after Vialli’s goal, was the same, a wonderful window in time between unspoken confirmation and orgiastic actuality.

Sampdoria’s triumph was popular around Italy and the world. Mancini and particularly Vialli grabbed the glory, yet the defence was an equally important part of their success. That defence was led by Vierchowod, probably the best man-marker in the world at the time and as tough as his background – he was the son of a Ukrainian soldier - might suggest.

He was one of the key senior players on whom Boskov was so reliant. It was sometimes suggested that those senior players ran the team, though the frequency and serenity with which they all dispute this suggests it was not the case. And almost 25 years later, Boskov’s policy on consulting those players looks extremely enlightened. “A coach has to have a dialogue with his players,” Boskov said in 1991. “But the decisions rest on my head. I wanted to know what Vialli thought, what Vierchowod thought, what Cerezo thought, because a coach can't know everything. But one thing is certain: all the responsibility is mine.'

“Boskov didn't concern himself too much with tactics, including substitutions,” said Mannini. “'Go out and enjoy yourselves. He knew he had a good squad. And we did what he said. He made it sound as if four or five others were influencing his decisions, but it was all him.”

Some of the players had been unhappy with the previous management. “When Boskov came, everything was reborn,” said Mancini. “I could not wait to start training because we have fun, joke around, and every day the old fox has a way of surprising us, of making us sweat with joy.”

If the players loved Boskov, they adored the president Mantovani, the man who had the original idea that Sampdoria could become the greatest team in the greatest league in the world. He was one of the main reasons Mancini and Vialli stayed so long at the club. The father/son analogy recurs in the Sampdoria story to the point of cliché, yet that is only indicative of how true it was. “Mantovani was the classic father-figure chairman, a throwback to another era,” says Vialli in The Italian Job. “He loved the club and saw players, coaches, fans, the media as members of an extended family.”

The mutual trust was such that hardly any of the players had an agent, because they knew Mantovani would give them a fair deal. Some even signed blank contracts. This, as much as anything, sums up Sampdoria’s harmony. “If I had an agent my relationship with Mantovani, who had a profound influence on my life, as a footballer and as a man, would not have been the same,” said Vialli. “I think most of all that I would not have made decisions with my heart , only with my head. And I am so grateful to have had the privilege of following my heart on many occasions.”

Vialli’s heart was heavy when, in 1992, a year after the Scudetto, Mantovani decided him to sell him to Juventus for a world-record fee to safeguard Sampdoria’s future. When Vialli met Mancini for the first time after the news had broken, they both immediately burst into tears. He decided he would now need an agent – “I knew I would never have the same relationship with another president” – and asked Mantovani, the man who was selling him to Juventus, to negotiate a contract for him. When Mantovani needed to find a new manager after the departure of Boskov in the same summer, he asked Mancini to help him interview prospective candidates.

The sale of Vialli, a year after the Scudetto, marked the beginning of the end of Sampdoria’s golden age. Human nature being what it is, their focus in 1991-92 was not to retain their title but to try to win the European Cup. They came cruelly close, losing 1-0 to Barcelona in extra-time of the final at Wembley. Vialli, who already knew he was leaving the club for Juventus, missed a number of good chances. He said it was “the day football broke my heart”.

The era truly ended on 14 October 1993, when Mantovani died at the age of 63. “The saddest day of my life,” said his favourite son Mancini, who was one of the Serie A-winning squad to carry his coffin at his funeral. A new side, under the management of Sven-Goran Eriksson and including Ruud Gullit, won the Coppa Italia later that season. Sampdoria have not won a trophy since and are currently a mid-table side in Serie B, a long way from the golden age. There have been piercing reminders of times past. Boskov died in 2014, aged 82, and was buried with a Sampdoria scarf in his coffin. Vialli was just 58 when he died of cancer in 2023.

Eighteen months earlier, while in remission, Vialli embraced Mancini on the Wembley pitch after Italy beat England to win the delayed Euro 2020. Mancini, the Italy manager, had recruited Vialli - officially as a "delegation chief", but essentially his role was to make people happy. Nobody did it better.

When they embraced, Vialli wept and held Mancini like a man who never wanted to let go – of this moment, and the life they had shared.

“Samp is my life,” said Mancini. “I spent 15 years there and they made me what I am now. With them, I won important trophies; I experienced great disappointments and great joys alike; and I learned a great deal about the world. I watched a big family being born, with Paolo Mantovani as father. In that city, Genoa, I made friends who never left me.”

When Mancini became manager of Manchester City he took Lombardo with him. In May 2012, when City won the English Premier League in amazing circumstances, Lombardo waved a Sampdoria scarf during the celebrations. Later that night, as the two toasted their victory over dinner with old friends, Lombardo started singing old Sampdoria songs and Mancini joined in.

City’s triumph was astonishing, achieved in a legendary manner, but it was a triumph of its time, driven almost entirely by money. In City’s moment of glory, the little boy in Lombardo went back to something else, something entirely more innocent: the story of Sampdoria.