The Start of Something Special

When people talk of the great Italian fantasisti of recent years – Roberto Baggio, Roberto Mancini, Gianfranco Zola, Alessandro del Piero, Francesco Totti – one name often tends to be overlooked. Giuseppe Giannini played for over fifteen years in the Serie A and almost fifty times for the national side yet, away from the streets of Rome, he seems to have been forgotten.

Probably, it is because er principe (the prince) never strayed away from AS Roma despite their relative lack of resources and inability to challenge. It is certainly why such a graceful and talented player ended his playing career with just one league title – won when he was still a fringe player back in 1982 – and three Coppa Italia successes to his name.

It could also be the reason why Giannini has struggled to make his mark in management. Where others have been able to rely on their name to kick-off their second career in football with a good job – Giannini’s contemporary Mancini, for instance, started off at Fiorentina – he has had to trawl the lower leagues, with all the pitfalls that this entails.

And Giannini has certainly come across many of those difficulties who was sacked by Foggia (after 6 months), Sambenedettese (7 months), Arges Pitesti (2 months) and Massese (7 months). Yet it is in the nature of Italian football that, despite the speed with which clubs decide to get rid of their managers and the frequency with which they do so, this doesn’t seem to have that much of an impact on the manager’s reputation.

So too it was for Giannini who, despite never having finished a full season at any one club, the offers still kept coming and the decision to leave Massese was quickly followed by an offer to take over at Gallipoli.

Here another tough season was expected for him. Few listed them among the favourites in the Southern section of the Prima Divisione (the Italian equivalent of League One) that contained heavyweights like Perugia and Pescara. After all, just ten seasons earlier this side had been playing in amateur football.

Yet there something seemed to click and, having gone to the top of the league by October, they never looked back. Eventually, main challengers Crotone fell away and Gallipoli won both the league title as well as direct promotion to the Serie B.

“Everyone played a significant role in this promotion,” Giannini said afterwards. “The players, the club, my staff and the fans. Yet I dedicate this win to myself: a joy after so many dark and unhappy moments that I’ve gone through in recent years. Destiny has repaid me. ".

And it could be about to repay him even more. Giannini has made little secret of his desire to manage Roma and, with Luciano Spalletti’s future still uncertain, that isn’t as preposterous a notion as one might think. After all, Giannini remains revered in Roma and, having been Francesco Totti’s idol, he would certainly curry the capitano’s favour.

Even if that doesn’t happen, Giannini has made his mark. People are talking about him as a genuine managerial prospect rather than, potentially, another player who failed to make the transition. As a player there had been suggestions that Giannini’s reluctance to move away from Rome was fuelled more by the comfort zone that playing there provided, that he wasn’t up to the challenge of really fighting it out to win titles.

It is a reputation that had stuck to Giannini. That he had often failed to reproduce the kind of form that he showed for Roma with the national team seemed to support such an implication. Now, at Gallipoli, he has finally shut such critics up. In the hope that it really is the start of something special.

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