On the 15th of January 1995, fifth-placed Lazio, coached by Zdeněk Zeman, played host to tenth-placed Foggia. Intent on a title challenge at the start of the year, Lazio were not meeting expectations.
Foggia were exceeding theirs. Tipped for relegation at the beginning of the campaign, Foggia’s first-year coach Enrico Catuzzi had enjoyed a strong start in Puglia. Catuzzi even had I Satanelli, (The Little Devils) in the top six in November, beating league leaders Juventus along the way.
Catuzzi had big shoes to fill. The Bohemian Zeman had left for the capital the previous summer and had been lauded as a miracle worker during his five seasons at Foggia from 1989 to 1994.
Earning two successive promotions from Italy’s third tier to Serie A, Zeman’s Foggia were conspicuous for their aggressive, attacking football. This high pressing, vertical style produced entertainment and lots of goals.
Featuring the star attacking trio of Giuseppe Signori, Francesco Baiano and Roberto Rambaudi, the triad accounted for forty-eight of the sixty-seven goals which saw Foggia light up Serie B.
Once in the top flight, Foggia continued in a similar vein and the legend of Zemanlandia was born. Their first season in the top flight saw them score fifty-eight goals, only champions Milan had scored more. They also conceded fifty-eight goals, only bottom club Ascoli had conceded more. They finished the year in ninth place.
Signori, Baiano and Rambaudi all left in the summer of 1992, and while Foggia continued to offload their best players every summer thereafter, Zeman kept to his 4-3-3, his attacking principles and crucially, he kept Foggia in Serie A.
While Catuzzi had never coached in the top flight before, he had been around the coaching fraternity for as long as Zeman. Indeed, both men were together in the coaching set-up at Palermo in the late 70s. When Catuzzi found his way to Puglia in the early 80s, his Bari team were known for their entertaining attacking football much as Zeman’s Foggia would be noted for almost a decade later.
However, if Zeman was seen as a maverick in Italian football in the early 90s, Catuzzi was seen as even more of an extreme in the early 80s. Catuzzi’s career then nosedived into the lower reaches of Italian football and he was coaching in Italy’s fourth tier at Leffe when he got the call from Foggia in the summer of 1994.
On his arrival, Serie A’s lowest-paid coach promised very little would change from the attacking style of Zeman. “Catuzzi has brought Foggia back into the land of the living with his methods and the ghost of Zeman is less of a hindrance” crowed Foggia owner Pasquale Casillo.
Wishful thinking or just over-exuberance at saving half a million pounds a year on their new coach, early results suggested Casillo and sporting director Giuseppe Pavone had pulled off another masterstroke.
The campaign was about to take a turn for the worst when they faced Zeman’s Lazio that January afternoon.
With the game tied at 0-0, three minutes before the interval, Foggia defender and ex-Zeman disciple, Giordano Caini, was sent off for a second bookable offence. After the break, Lazio’s attacking trio ran riot. Alen Boksic and the two ex-Foggia men, Signori and Rambaudi, inspired Lazio to a 7-1 victory. Lazio’s mauling of Foggia would signal the contrasting directions both teams would take for the remainder of the season.
While Catuzzi and Zeman had similar attacking philosophies, the two coaches were poles apart in their preparation. Zeman’s training sessions were famously gruelling. Methods which were more suited to a platoon of marines than professional football players. His players were expected to have the stamina of middle-distance athletes. Running drills of 3,000 metres, with a few minutes rest, then another 3,000 metres, rest and then a final 3,000 metres, were customary. “He could make his players feel superhuman” once remarked Francesco Baiano.
Zeman also had a knack for unleashing the potential of unlikely goal getters. As coach of Messina, he turned workmanlike forward Salvatore Schillaci into a prolific marksman. “Toto” Schillaci would score twenty-three goals in thirty-five games for Messina, earn a move to Juventus and by the following summer go on to be the top scorer in the 1990 World Cup.
When Zeman moved on to Foggia, he was instrumental in turning a diminutive left-winger who wore size 5 boots into a goalscoring machine.
Giuseppe Signori had been rejected by Inter in his youth for being too small. He found a home at third division Leffe, where he also repaired television sets and radios for the Leffe’s club president.
Having worked his way up the Italian football pyramid with spells at Piacenza and Trento, Signori eventually found his way to Foggia and Zeman in 1989.
After coming on as a substitute and scoring a goal at Monza, a goal that was thought to be instrumental in keeping Zeman in his job, Zeman began to field Signori as a starter in the Czech’s idiosyncratic 4-3-3 formation.
In the era of man to man marking, Foggia’s attacking trio would position themselves centrally, forcing their opponent’s full-backs to come inside to help their central defence. Zeman’s full-backs could now move into the unoccupied space when attacking. A common sight now, but this was revolutionary in its time.
Zeman urged Signori to consider shooting at goal as his first option, believing him to be capable of scoring twenty goals a season.
Within two years, Foggia were playing in Serie A and Signori, Baiano and Rambaudi had all earned international call ups. Signori moved on to Lazio in 1992 and finished his debut season in Rome as the Serie A top scorer with twenty-six goals. He did it again the following year by scoring twenty-three.
Reunited with Il Boemo in the capital, Signori’s third season at Lazio saw them score eight at home to Fiorentina, seven against Padova, five against Napoli, four against Milan and Inter; and they routed champions Juventus 3-0 away in Turin.
By the time Foggia met Lazio again in the penultimate round of the 1994-95 season, home fans at Foggia’s Stadio Pino Zaccheria were praying for a miracle.
Just three wins in the seventeen rounds since that January afternoon at the Olimpico meant Foggia were in the relegation zone and three points adrift of Genoa and Padova.
The only goal of the game came on thirty-six minutes. A Giuseppe Signori free-kick condemned his old team to Serie B.
Enrico Catuzzi’s solitary stint as a top-flight coach had come to an end and so to Foggia’s four-year adventure in Serie A. They have not been back since.
Lazio would go on to finish the season in joint second place. Their highest league position for twenty-one years and the highest league position Zeman and Signori would ever achieve in their Serie A careers.
On the 21st of May 1995, the two men had also helped finish what they started down in Southeast Italy. The day the dream died in Foggia.