Mister Five Billion

End of January, 1982. It is snowing in Casteldebole, but the football training carries on regardless. Halfway through the season, everyone is on a tight schedule, because it is already clear that Bologna must fight to avoid relegation. The team is on a bad run, but there is one player who has been playing well and drawing everyone’s attention. He has played 16 games in the league so far, many of them coming off the bench. He has scored six goals. The latest one, on 17 January in the Sant’Elia Stadium in Cagliari, earned Bologna a draw. Gigi Riva, nicknamed ‘Roll of Thunder’, the undisputed striker of the Italian national team, whose goals fired Cagliari to the league championship in 1970, complimented Mancini on that goal. And Riva is not the only one to marvel at the boy. All the supporters in the Communal Stadium are madly in love with him. They consider him the new Angelo Schiavio (the Bologna centre forward of the 1920s and 30s, who never wore another club shirt, and who won the World Cup in 1934 with the national team, coached by Vittorio Pozzo) or Giacomo Bulgarelli (the Bologna captain of the 1960s and 70s). Newspapers and magazines devote entire pages to him. They describe him as ‘the boy of the whirling goal, waiting to seize the fleeting moment’; and they prophesise about his future: ‘he will do great things, marvellous, unique things.’ They write, ‘Everyone wants to tap with their blessed sword the head of this holy terror from Marche, this leaping fawn.’ They wonder – in baffling jargon – about his position on the field: ‘passing player on the wing, centre-forward manoeuvre, or else?’

They take a wild guess at numbers: 5 billion liras, this is his market value – or so they say. It is really something, as Diego Armando Maradona is worth 10–12 billion. Bologna managers say that it is the press who is setting the price, because ‘the boy is not on the market.’ Famous last words.

Rai TV dedicates a ten-minute special to him, titled Goals, Love and a Little Bit of Fantasy. They go and see him in Casteldebole, they ask him how it feels, what it is like to see all those figures and get so much attention from the media. ‘It is a great thing, a wonderful thing, but I’m feeling just the same as ever. It won’t go to my head,’ Mancini answers. And he really does not look worried in the slightest. However, Burgnich does worry, and very much so. He fears the boomerang effect of such massive media coverage; he is afraid that the press will lift him to riches, only to plunge him back into rags at his first mistake.

It won’t happen. Bologna, though, will be plunged into rags, as on 16 May 1982, for the first time in its 73 years of football history, the club is sucked into the quagmire of the lower divisions.

Let us take a closer look at those four tragic months. On 28 February, Serie A match day 20, a head-to-head match to secure safety is held at San Siro. AC Milan are second from bottom of the table, with 13 points; Bologna are third from bottom, with 16 points. It is a great opportunity to open up a significant gap, but Bologna fluff their lines. They lose 2–1, thereby losing ground, and momentum, in the race to avoid relegation. Following this, Bologna get a sound beating from Cesena as well: 4–1. This defeat costs Tarcisio Burgnich his job. On 15 March, with eight match days remaining before the end of the season, his assistant, Franco Liguori, takes over. A former Bologna holding midfielder, Liguori’s career ended at a very young age because of a serious injury.

The first match under the new manager is deceiving: 2–0 at the Olympic Stadium against Roma, Mancini scoring the second goal to secure the result. ‘We really picked ourselves up with today’s win. We left behind teams such as AC Milan and Cagliari, who could have caused us some trouble. Let’s hope we carry on like this,’ announces ‘the holy terror from Marche’ on television. On the following Sunday, Bologna draw 0–0 against the champions Juventus. Things are starting to look up, or so it seems. Quite the contrary: the Red-and-Blues come crashing to the ground and chalk up one loss after another, four in total, against Napoli, Fiorentina, Udinese and Genoa respectively. On 9 May, a home match against Inter Milan – sitting fourth in the league – is played on the next-to-last match day of the season. Azeglio Vicini is sitting in the stands, checking on Mancini’s progress with an eye on his Under-21 team. Eight minutes into the game, the ghost of relegation hovers over the old Communal Stadium after Centi scores the opening goal for the Black-and-Blues. Only three minutes later, Bordon, the Inter Milan keeper, saves a shot by Mancini. In the nineteenth minute though, Fiorini equalises, before firing Bologna into a 2–1 lead six minutes later. At the same time, however, Cagliari and Genoa – who are both one point ahead of Bologna in the league table – are winning, so the pecking order remains the same. Inter Milan give up the ghost, and Mancini scores on a long lone run from midfield: 3–1, and Mancini’s ninth goal of the season. When the championship began, he was only hoping to play in some of the matches; in the end, he has played in all of them.

So we come to 16 May, the 30th and final match day. Bologna have accumulated 23 points, AC Milan 22, Cagliari and Genoa 24. Four teams within two points of each other, two relegation places to be assigned, and 90 minutes for the final verdict. All the matches will start at three o’clock sharp. The Red-and-Blues think they can manage, because they are playing a relatively peaceful Ascoli with no particular ranking aspirations. Nine minutes into the game, Mozzini scores the goal of hope for Bologna. Still, at the end of the game, the result is a 2–1 defeat and Bologna are relegated to Serie B, together with AC Milan and Como.

It is a tragedy for the team and for the city as a whole. It is a terrible disappointment for Mancini too, although, unlike his teammates, he gets a chance to make up for it straight away.

He wins the national league championship with the Allievi team, beating Bari in the final. Mancini is the captain and top goalscorer in a team of promising young players: Turchi, Salice, Nobile, Martelli, Treggia, De Bianco, Macina, Bellotto, Marocchi, Mancini and Gazzaneo. And together with Treggia and Macina, he is capped for Vicini’s national youth football team.

At the end of the season, he is asked whether, all in all, this has been a positive experience. Mancini smiles wryly and asserts, ‘Well, in a way it has, because the Allievi trophy came right after our relegation, when I needed it most. But it would have been better to avoid relegation and win the title, too.’

He says that he gave his all in the championship: he ran a lot, he played a lot. What really struck him about his first Serie A season was ‘the Italian defenders’ grit; I believe it is unparalleled in Europe. It is really difficult to score over here.’

He says that he is tired and he is going on holiday: at first to Jesi, then, as usual, to the seaside in Senigallia. When he leaves Casteldebole, the Boy is convinced he will be back 20 days later, for the beginning of his next season in Serie B. However, only a few hours later, an auction between Fiorentina, Udinese, Sampdoria and Juventus is under way for the Bologna baby-centre-forward (as the newspapers are now calling him).

In Assago – transfer market paradise for Italian football – hefty sums are thrown around: Sampdoria offer 4–5 billion, an amount deemed excessive only a few months earlier. People will find out about the deal for the new Red-and-Blue superstar only on 6 July, when Gigi Radice, the manager hastily recalled to sweeten the bitter pill of relegation to supporters, hands in his resignation, together with all his coaching staff, after finding out that the president’s promises to strengthen the team are nothing more than empty words, and that Mancini is going to be sold. The news is spreading fast in town and supporters begin their protests, with demonstrations along the streets and hails of stones, which break the windows of Tommaso Fabretti’s insurance offices. Some hothead even tries to set fire to the president’s house. Some time later, in a newspaper interview, president Fabretti will respond by accusing Radice, who ‘in person and at length had been negotiating Mancini’s transfer to Juventus. He only got so worked up because I was the one who finalised the deal – and in any case, I got a bigger sum than what Juventus had been willing to spend. Every single person in the world of football has agreed with me since.’

On 14 July 1982, three days after Enzo Bearzot’s Italy win the Mundial in Madrid, the transfer market closes in Assago. Giacomo Bulgarelli officially announces that the baby-striker Mancini is being sold to Sampdoria. The actual transfer fee is unknown. It is understood that only four players (Galdiolo, Logozzo, Rosselli and Brondi in co-ownership) will come to Bologna. Fifty supporters hang a banner off the trees in Bologna. It says, ‘Operation clean city. Fabretti must go. With a travel warrant.’

Nevertheless, the player who could have brightened the Red-and-Blues’ future is now heading for Genoa and the club of the oil tycoon Paolo Mantovani.