Many of the greatest Italian club sides are heavily identified with the foreign stars they featured. The late 80's Milan built around the Dutch trio of Gullit, Rijkaard and Van Basten immediately springs to mind. But the phenomenon goes back much further. Thirty years earlier Milan had featured another trio of foreigners: the Swedes Gren, Nordahl and Lidholm (affectionately nicknamed GreNoLi). And when Italian clubs had started to win their first European cups in the 60's, foreign stars continued to play their part. Helenio Herrera's Grande Inter featured the Spaniard Luis Suares as its playmaker and the Brazilian Jaïr on the wing.
And we haven't even mentioned the so-called Oriundi yet. Those were South-American players of Italian descent, who -thanks to an expediently procured passport- often even featured in the Italian national team. Their history goes back even further. The World Cup that Italy won in 1934 would never have been possible without the three Argentinean players they fielded, including one of the absolute stars of that team: Raimundo Orsi. So foreigners and Italian teams, a long and happy marriage? Not quite, because for fifteen years Italian clubs were in fact not allowed to sign foreign players.
| Grande Inter featuring the Brazilian Jaïr and the Spaniard Luis Suarez |
The ban can be traced back to a dramatic defeat during the 1966 World Cup. In England the Italians won their opening game, defeating Chile 2-0, but then slumped to defeat against the Soviet Union. Everyone expected Italy to rebound in their last match against North Korea, and progress to the knockout stage. Instead, they suffered a shock 1-0 defeat and were eliminated from the tournament. It's hard to overestimate the shock and outrage this national disgrace caused back home. If the stories are to be believed the players were literally pelted with rotten tomatoes on their return.
Friend and foe agreed that something needed to be done to prevent a repeat. The Italian FA decided that those foreign players who had been helping their clubs win domestic and international silverware, were in fact holding back Italian football. Especially because they often filled the crucial positions in their teams. In order to make way for Italian talent, the influx of foreigners needed to be halted.
No sooner said than done, a ban on incoming foreign transfers was imposed in the summer of 1966. Those foreigners already active in the Italian league were allowed to stay, and could even be transferred between clubs. That's how the AC Milan that would beat Ajax in the 1969 European Cup final could still field the German defender Karl-Heinz Schnellinger and the Swedish winger Kurt Hamrin three years after the ban came into effect. But as of the 1966-1967 season, the influx of fresh foreign talent into the Serie A came to a halt.
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| 19th july 1966: Italian goalie Enrico Albertosi concedes a North Korean goal |
It could be argued the ban was a huge and immediate success. The objective, after all, was to boost the performance of the Italian national team, and they ended up winning the European Championship only two years after the ban had been imposed. It may have taken them a coin toss in the semi-final against the USSR, and a replay in the final against Yugoslavia, but still. Another two years later, during the 1970 World Cup, Italy made it to the final of the tournament again. All's well that ends well, then?
Not really. For the clubs in the Serie A the picture was a lot less rosy. Both the Inter Milan side that was defeated by Ajax in the 1972 European Cup final, and the Juventus side that suffered the same fate a year later, were forced to rely on heavily ageing players to have some sort of foreign presence on the field. After 1973 no Italian club would reach the final of the European Cup for the duration of the ban. In fact, the Serie A winner was usually eliminated in the first or second round. 1978 was the only exception, when Juventus reached the semi-final thanks to a lucky draw and a penalty shoot-out against Ajax, only to go out against Club Brugge.
In 1980 the clubs had had enough. AC Milan, the 1979 Italian Champion, had gone out in the first round against FC Porto, after Juventus had suffered the same fate a season earlier, against Rangers. The clubs demanded the right to start signing foreign players again. Reluctantly, the Italian FA agreed. Not that the floodgates were opened or anything, clubs would be allowed to sign one foreigner each during the summer of 1980.
Serie A champions Inter Milan decided to sign the Austrian playmaker Herbert Prohaska. Runners-up Juventus bought the Irish midfielder Liam Brady. Third placed Torino made the unusual decision, for an Italian team at least, of signing a defender: the young Dutch international Michel van de Korput. Other remarkable names from that first batch of foreign imports to the Serie A included Brazilian international Falcão, who went to play for AS Roma, and Dutch legend Ruud Krol, who was signed by Napoli. Not all Serie A clubs followed the herd. Five of them opted against bringing in a non-Italian player, although two would end up paying for their unwillingness -or inability- to attract foreign talent by being relegated.
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| AC Milan's Dutch trio |
Just like the ban could be described -with some good will- as an immediate and resounding success, considering how well the Italian national team did in the tournaments following it, so could the re-opening of the Serie A to foreign players, as Prohaska promptly led Inter to the semi-finals of the European Cup. After Italian clubs were allowed to sign a second foreigner in 1982, Juventus -fielding a French playmaker and a Polish forward- became the first Italian club in a decade to make it to the final of the European Cup. A year later AS Roma repeated the feat, with two Brazilians in their line-up. Then in 1985 the Juventus of Platini and Boniek became the first Serie A champion to win the European Cup since AC Milan back in 1969, although the redemptive win was overshadowed by the Heizel drama.
Two foreign players wouldn't be the end of it. When the winner of the Serie A was eliminated in the first round in 1987 for the first time in a while, the option to sign a third foreigner was immediately created. Just in time for 1988 Serie A winners AC Milan to add Rijkaard to a team that already included Gullit and Van Basten, and win the European Cup for two years in a row. The floodgates would really open when ongoing European integration mandated free movement of workers. That's not to say Italian clubs are now free to sign as many foreigners as they want. Because foreign players now often outnumber Italian players on Italian teams, the Italian FA's rules related to the only category they can still exert an influence on, non-EU players, are extremely restrictive.
But that really appears to be a case keeping your finger firmly in the dyke while the water is generously flooding over it.