“I always advised him not to leave Bergamo at night, it seemed like I felt it in my blood."
Rosanna Pisani (mother of Federico Pisani)
The final league table may not lie, but it does not always tell the full story. When the record shows that Atalanta finished in tenth place in 1996-97, their undistinguished final standing conceals an inspired and emotionally charged season in Bergamo. In all the good, the bad and the tragic.
Under coach Emiliano Mondonico, Atalanta’s class of 1997 was a breakout year for a young striker on loan from Parma by the name of Filippo Inzaghi. It would also see the emergence of cultured midfielder and youth product, Domenico Morfeo, and the return to form of the onetime most expensive player in the world, Gianluigi Lentini.
Reunited with Mondonico from their time together at Torino, Lentini had spent the last three years recovering his form and fitness in the aftermath of a horrific car crash in 1993.
Midway through the season, Lentini’s new teammate, another winger and Atalanta youth product, Federico Pisani, would not be so lucky.
Mondonico had made his mark in Bergamo almost a decade earlier in his first spell at the club. His Atalanta won promotion to Serie A at the first time of asking in 1988. He then proceeded to guide them to impressive sixth and seventh place finishes before leaving for Torino in the summer of 1990.
In Mondonico’s four years in Turin and with Lentini as its star, Torino qualified for Europe, secured a third-place finish behind big spenders Juventus and Milan and reached a UEFA Cup Final in 1992. Without Lentini, who was sold to Milan that summer, Torino won the Coppa Italia in 1993.
Lentini’s sale was not an isolated case as Mondonico became the victim of his own success. Debt-ridden Torino sold off all of their remaining best players. Luca Marchegiani, Enzo Scifo, Luca Fusi, Roberto Policano, Silvio Benedetti and Martin Vasquez all left for pastures new.
An eighth-place finish for a depleted Torino squad in 1993-94 saw Mondonico return to Atalanta. Back in Italy’s second tier, Atalanta needed their new coach to repeat his old trick of 1988. Mondonico duly obliged and Atalanta won promotion once again.
1995-96 saw Atalanta retain their status in Serie A and reach the final of the Coppa Italia. Once again for Mondonico, the club then sold off their best players. Uruguayan defender Paolo Montero and Italian striker Christian Vieri both left for Juventus.
Expectations were low for the new campaign with Serie A survival the main objective. After six rounds of 1996-97, it looked like Atalanta would do well to achieve that. Rooted at the bottom of the table with just two points, the only crumb of comfort was their new No.9 was scoring goals.
Filippo Inzaghi had been a mainstay for Italy’s Under-21 squad and had picked up European Championship winner’s medals in 1994 and 1996 under coach Cesare Maldini. Owned by Parma, he was loaned to Atalanta in the summer of 1996, when expensive their new arrivals Hernan Crespo and Enrico Chiesa meant that Inzaghi was surplus to requirements for Parma coach Carlo Ancelotti
Superpippo hit the ground running in Bergamo. Scoring against Fiorentina, Vicenza, Inter, Perugia and the winner in Week 7 at home to Lazio in Atalanta’s first victory of the season. The following week away at Milan, Inzaghi did it again as Atalanta came away with a point and started to climb the table.
Also scoring in that win over Lazio— and supplying Inzaghi a week later at San Siro—was the resurgent Lentini on loan from Milan. Lentini had once been considered the golden boy of Italian football. Under Mondonico at Torino, the winger’s form sparked a bidding war between Juventus and Milan. Milan’s owner Silvio Berlusconi made Lentini the most expensive player in the world by signing him for a world record fee of £13 million.
Lentini’s Milan career had started brightly and having established himself in the Italian national team, Lentini was looking forward to playing a significant role in the 1994 World Cup.
In August 1993, all those hopes disappeared after his near-fatal car accident. Lentini was sidelined for almost a year. On his return, he was marginalised by coach Fabio Capello and became a bit-part player. In Bergamo and back with Mondonico, Lentini quickly found his groove again playing regular first-team football. So much so that by November, he had earned a recall to the Italian national team under Arrigo Sacchi.
Mondonico had a similar positive influence over Domenico Morfeo. The twenty-one-year-old Morfeo was a classic Number 10 in the Italian tradition. The type of player idolised by fans but tactically inconvenient for coaches and becoming somewhat of an endangered species.
Roberto Baggio was most often on the bench at Milan and Gianfranco Zola left Parma for English football, frustrated at being played out on the wing by Ancelotti. Mondonico shared the distrust of the Trequartista role and convinced Morfeo to play as a third midfielder in a 4-3-3. A formation that was trending across Italy and European football in the latter part of the decade.
Morfeo took to the position immediately. Morfeo, Lentini and Inzaghi powered Atalanta to a ten-game unbeaten streak through the late Autumn and early Winter. By the time the international break came around in February, Atalanta were joint fourth in Serie A.
In the early hours of Wednesday 12th February 1997, the Italian national squad were sleeping at their London hotel. The Azzurri were about to face Glenn Hoddle’s England at Wembley in a crucial world cup qualifier. Back in Italy, Atalanta’s twenty-two-year-old winger, Federico Pisani and his girlfriend, Alessandra Midali, were returning home from a night out at the casino in Milan.
Just a few hundred metres from San Siro, Pisani’s BMW convertible crashed into a pylon supporting an underpass. While the two passengers in the backseat left the hospital with minor injuries both Pisani and Midali were pronounced dead on arrival.
Atalanta’s home game against Vicenza was just four days later. On a highly emotional afternoon at the Stadio Comunale, the families of Pisani and Midali were in the player’s changing room before the game to embrace the squad.
When Paolo Foglio opened the scoring for Atalanta in the second half, the stadium erupted. Foglio like Morfeo had played with Pisani since childhood as the three won everything together at the youth level. Morfeo and Foglio ran hand in hand to the Curva Nord to kiss the Number 14 shirt of their fallen teammate. They were quickly joined by the rest of the team who lined up to pay tribute. It was and still is an incredibly moving sight to witness.
Inzaghi would add two more to his season’s tally and Atalanta would go on to win the game 3-1 and move into third place. The highest position they would reach that season in their lowest moment. “Today we played and won with twelve men,” Morfeo remarked after the game. “We will take Federico wherever we go.”
Atalanta’s Curva Nord and their training complex are both named after Federico Pisani.
Aside from an impressive 4-0 win at home to Sampdoria at the beginning of March, a mixed run of results saw Atalanta’s European dream disappear as they lost their invincibility at home and struggled on the road.
Inzaghi would finish the year as Serie A’s top scorer with twenty-four goals and earn his big move to Juventus that summer. Morfeo would move on to Fiorentina. Lentini would return to Torino in Serie B and Mondonico followed him back to Turin a year later.
A team that burned brightly yet only briefly. United in a time of great adversity, then almost at once, broken up. Such was the transient nature and economic realities of a provincial team in Serie A.
Twenty-five years have elapsed. A duration of time now greater than the years Federico Pisani spent alive.
Now under Gian Piero Gasperini, Atalanta have enjoyed fiscal stability and sporting overachievement in recent times, qualifying for the Champions League in three of the last four seasons.
Their fans have had much to shout about. They continue to do so in the Curva Pisani and with the memory of that poignant 1996-97 campaign in their hearts.