Golazzo | Part 1 | Football Italia In Football Manager

With Football Manager 2025 being delayed until March, what better opportunity to have a trip down memory lane with an awesome nostalgia-filled custom database?

Growing up in the early 1990s, some of my earliest memories of “getting into” football news and watching football were formed by Channel 4’s Football Italia. I have great memories of watching the legendary James Richardson sipping his espresso while poring through the pages of Gazzetta Della Sport, Italy’s iconic pink dedicated sports newspaper, and telling us the latest events from across Serie A, which, at that time, was undoubtedly the greatest league in the world. And who can forget the iconic “Gooooaaaalllazzzzooooo” cry at the end of the show’s credits.

Football Italia first aired in 1992 and, at its peak, attracted around 800,000 viewers per week, making it the most-watched program about a non-British domestic league to this day. Channel 4 also showed live games on a Sunday afternoon and I remember being glued to watching the likes of Inter, Milan and Roma compete with their epic squads. If, like me, this gives you a great nostalgic feeling, here’s a taster:

As a result, 90s Italian football will always hold a special place in my heart. So when I saw that Football Manager database creator The Mad Scientist was releasing a database for the 1994/95 season, I knew I had to delve into it and start a save in Italy. The database has the top 2 tiers available in England and Italy, plus the top tiers in France, Germany, the Netherlands, Scotland and Spain. So we’re going to start this adventure in Italy’s Serie B, with Atalanta. But more on that later.

Setting The Scene For Golazzo

First of all, we need to set the scene by transporting you back over 30 years in time to the summer of 1994. Brazil have just won the World Cup in the USA led by the likes of Romário, Bebeto and Dunga. In Europe, AC Milan won their 14th Italian title by scoring just 36 goals and conceding 15 in 34 games. Elsewhere in Europe, Man United had just won the second Premier League and Man City avoided relegation by 3 points, Barcelona won La Liga on goal difference ahead of Deportivo with Real Madrid behind Zaragoza in 4th, Bayern nicked the German title back from Werder Bremen, PSG won only their 2nd French title, Ajax won the Dutch title and Rangers were champions in Scotland.

AC Milan are considered the most reputable club in the world followed by Barcelona, Real Madrid, Juventus, Inter, Man United, Liverpool, Roma, Ajax, Bayern, Sampdoria, Benfica, Porto, Arsenal, Leeds, Valencia, Napoli, PSV, Atlético, Sevilla, Werder Bremen, Flamengo, Lazio, Dortmund and Botafogo.

In the 1994/95 season, which was the first to feature 3 points for a win, Marcello Lippi led Juventus to the Scudetto, winning Serie A by 10 points from Lazio and Parma. Milan, Roma and Inter came 4th, 5th and 6th to qualify for the UEFA Cup, while Genoa, Foggia, Reggiana and Brescia were relegated. Gabriel Batistuta was the top scorer with 26 goals for Fiorentina, followed by Roma’s Abel Balbo scoring 22. In Serie B, Piacenza won the title and were joined in promotion by Udinese, Vicenza and Atalanta.

Best Players in Italy in 1994

Italy’s Serie A was very much the place to be in 1994. The league’s clubs and players to look out for in the world’s greatest league included:

AC Milan: Carlo Cudicini (20), Alessandro Costacurta (28), Franco Baresi (34), Paolo Maldini (26), Christian Panucci (21), Marcel Desailly (25), Demetrio Albertini (22), Ruud Gullit (31), Roberto Donadoni (30), Paolo Di Canio (26), Zvonimir Boban (25), Dejan Savicevic (27), Gianluigi Lentini (25), Marco van Basten (29)

Bari: Nicola Ventola and Nicola Legrottaglie (both 17)
Brescia: Andrea Pirlo (15)
Cagliari: Roberto Muzzi (22), Julio Dely Valdés (27)
Cremonese: Enrico Chiesa (on loan, 23)
Fiorentina: Francesco Toldo (22), Márcio Santos (24), Giovanni Tedesco (22), Christian Amoroso (17), Rui Costa (22), Francesco Baiano (26), Gabriel Batistuta (25)
Foggia: Luigi Di Biagio (23), Pasquale Padalino (21)
Genoa: Fabio Galante (20), Kazuyoshi Miura (27), Tomás Skuhravy (28)
Internazionale Milan: Gianluca Pagliuca (27), Gianluca Festa (25), Nicola Berti (27), Dennis Bergkamp (25), Marco Delvecchio (21), Rubén Sosa (28)
Juventus: Angelo Peruzzi (24), Ciro Ferrara (27), Jurgen Kohler (28), Alessio Tacchinardi (18), Robert Jarni (25), Antonio Conte (24), Didier Deschamps (25), Roberto Baggio (27), Fabrizio Ravanelli (25), Alessandro Del Piero (19), Gianluca Vialli (30)

Lazio: Flavio Roma (20), Paolo Negro (22), Alessandro Nesta (18), Aron Winter (27), Diego Fuser (25), Roberto Di Matteo (24), Paul Gascoigne (27), Giuseppe Signori (26), Marco Di Vaio (18), Pierluigi Casiraghi (25), Alen Boksic (24)
Napoli: Fabio Cannavaro (20), Alain Boghossian (23), Fabio Pecchia (20), Freddy Rincón (27), Benito Carbone (22)
Padova: Alexi Lalas (24)
Parma: Gianluigi Buffon (16), Roberto Sensini (27), Dino Baggio (22), Stefano Fiore (19), Tomas Brolin (24), Gianfranco Zola (28), Marcus Branca (29), Faustino Asprilla (24)

Reggiana: Taffarel (28), Massimo Brambilla (21), Sunday Oliseh (19), Paulo Futre (28)
Sampdoria: Walter Zenga (34), Sinisa Mihajlovic (25), Attilio Lombardo (28), David Platt (28), Roberto Mancini (29), Claudio Bellucci (19)
Roma: Aldair (28), Jonas Thern (27), Francesco Totti (17), Abel Balbo (28)
Torino: Jocelyn Angloma (28), Abedi Pelé (29)

Additionally, the best players in Serie B, which will be more relevant to our early challenge, include:

Christian Vieri (Venezia, 21)
Oliver Bierhoff (Ascoli, 26)
Paolo Montero (Atalanta, 22)
Maurizio Ganz (Atalanta, 25)
Dario Hubner (Cesena, 27)
Massimo Taibi (Piacenza, 24)
Salvatore Fresi (Salernitana, 21)
Eusebio Di Francesco (Lucchese, 24)

Best Players in the World in 1994

Italy is home to 3 of the 4 best players in the world (Gullit, van Basten and Baggio). Those players aside, the most reputable players include – and keep an eye out for the huge lack of England-based players:

Romário (Barcelona, 28)

Diego Maradona (unattached, 33)
Michael Laudrup (Real Madrid, 30)
Lothar Matthaus (FC Bayern, 33)
Ronald Koeman (Barcelona, 31)
Gheorghe Hagi (Barcelona, 29)
Peter Schmeichel (Man United, 30)
Emilio Butragueno (Real Madrid, 30)
Fernando Hierro (Real Madrid, 26)

Jurgen Klinsmann (Tottenham, 29)
Andreas Moller (Dortmund, 26)
Bebeto (Deportivo, 30)
Frank Rijkaard (Ajax, 31)
Andreas Brehme (Kaiserslautern, 33)
Andoni Zubizarreta (Valencia, 32)
Rudi Voller (Leverkusen, 34)
Éric Cantona (Man United, 28)
Enzo Scifo (Monaco, 28)
Matthias Sammer (Dortmund, 26)
Stefan Reuter (Dortmund, 27)
Alan Shearer (Blackburn, 23)

Michel (Real Madrid, 31)
Manuel Sanchís (Real Madrid, 29)
Hristo Stoichkov (Barcelona, 28)
Michel Preud’homme (Benfica, 35)
Iván Zamorano (Real Madrid, 27)
Stefan Effenberg (Gladbach, 25)
Ian Rush (Liverpool, 32)
Bodo Illgner (Koln, 27)
Dunga (Stuttgart, 39)
Mark Hughes (Man United, 30)
John Barnes (Liverpool, 30)

For wonderkid lovers, the best players aged 21 or younger not based in Italy include:

Ryan Giggs (Man United, 20)

Luís Figo (Sporting, 21)
Roberto Carlos (Palmeiras, 21)
Raúl (Real Madrid, 17)

Edgar Davids (Ajax, 21)
Marc Overmars (Ajax, 21)
Ronaldo (PSV, 17)

Patrick Kluivert (Ajax, 18)
Robbie Fowler (Liverpool, 19)
Clarence Seedorf (Ajax, 18)
Aitor Karanka (Bilbao, 20)
Jay-Jay Okocha (Frankfurt, 20)

Juan Eduardo Esnáider (Zaragoza, 21)
Sol Campbell (Tottenham, 19)
Robert Pires (Metz, 20)
Patrik Berger (Sparta Praha, 20)
Chris Sutton (Blackburn, 21)
Alfonso (Real Madrid, 21)
Chris Bart-Williams (Sheffield Wednesday, 20)
Julen Guerrero (Bilbao, 20)

Gaizka Mendieta (Valencia, 20)
Lars Ricken (Dortmund, 18)
Nwankwu Kanu (Ajax, 17)
Samuel Kuffour (Bayern, 17)
Giovane Élber (Stuttgart, 21)
Nicky Butt (Man United, 19)
Fernando Morientes (Albacete, 18)
Ludovic Giuly (Lyon, 18)
Andriy Shevchenko (Dynamo Kyiv, 17)

Patrick Vieira (Cannes, 18)
Claude Makélélé (Nantes, 21)
Jens Jeremies (Dynamo Dresden, 20)
Trevor Sinclair (QPR, 21)
Florian Maurice (Lyon, 20)
Rubén Baraja (Valladolid, 19)
Iván de la Pena (Barcelona, 18)
Joseba Etxeberria (Real Sociedad, 16)
Johan Micoud (Cannes, 20)
Ángel Manuel Cuéllar (Betis, 21)
Abel Xavier (Benfica, 21)
Rigobert Song (Metz, 18)
Milan Rapaic (Hajduk, 20)

These are some of the players we’ll be looking at as we embark on our Golazzo mission in Italy’s Serie B. And we’ll be doing that with a club that’s now very much a Serie A regular but, in 1994, had just been relegated into the second tier.

So in Part 2, we will begin our Golazzo adventure with… Atalanta. Join us on Wednesday as we explore the Atalanta squad and embark on a mission to reach the pinnacle of the world’s greatest league, Serie A.