Maurizio Zamparini, portrait: president of Venice and Palermo, a life in football

At sixteen I sacked a coach for the first time, his name was Rivetti, he was a carpenter, three evenings a week he coached the Sevegliano team. The story is that Rivetti gave him the number 7 shirt before a game asking him to cover tasks, he refused it, he wanted 9, only 9, he was a center forward, he scored goals. He slammed the door of the locker room, went off in a rage, leaving Rivetti with the shirt in his hand. Later – when in the stands he met the president, the elementary school teacher Fabbri – he went up to him and advised him: “Rivetti is worth nothing, pres must send him away”. The Sevegliano was defeated that Sunday, the next day Rivetti was sacked. So – to want to take it wide – it must be said that Maurizio Zamparini began to be what we have known since childhood and nothing, he had it in his blood, this natural inclination to exempt coaches. At the end of their career there will be fifty-one (51!).

Beyond anger, kindness

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The anecdote about Zamparini “Mangiallenatori” has been cleared – because this is the label that will remain sewn on him – it remains to be told – in these hours in which he has taken his leave of this land – of a true and true football man, one who he knew a lot, a generous entrepreneur who invested money and passion, time and fury in football, often with brilliant intuitions that were immediately obscured by a whim, a pull or a fit of anger, but only for the use and consumption of the cameras, because Zampa – to know him – was instead a very kind person, capable of unsuspected gestures of affection. Volcanic is the adjective that you will find most often associated with his name, certainly fiery he was, but also – above all – a vain of the first order, who liked to put his face on it, be in the newspapers and dress now as a tribune of the plebs now as Robin Hood of Italian football al Process on Monday by Aldo Biscardi to throw arrows against everything and everyone, but basically without ever taking himself too seriously, so much so that it was not difficult to catch – after the pissing off – a thunderous laugh.

In Milan during the boom years

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Child of war, class of 1941, born in Sevegliano, motorway towards Udine, Palmanova exit. His grandfather was the toll gatekeeper for a level crossing, his father went to work and seek his fortune in Venezuela, Maurizio lived with his mother and his sister Gabriella – who later became an esteemed theater actress – in a public house in front of the sports field in the square. Sant’Andrea until – at the age of ten – he went to “Renati”, the college of Udine. The first ball is given to him by an uncle, he plays for years as an amateur footballer – center forward of course – until the Interregionale, a graduate aeronautical expert, immediately goes to Milan to look for work. The 1960s have just turned on, Italy is racing towards the future, there is an economic boom and Zamparini is riding it with the strength of his twenty years – first job as a seller of radiators door to door, second job as a seller of photocopying machines – later making money with discount supermarkets, Emmezeta and Mercatone are his brands (slogan: “Quality at the lowest prices in Italy”) and managing – in the 80s and 90s – more than twenty shopping centers throughout Italy, with about 4000 employees and based in Vergiate, in the Varese area. These are also the years in which he enters a new world, that of football, on foot together. Fifteen years in Venice (1987-2002), another sixteen in Palermo (2002-2018): 100 million spent in the Lagoon, double in Sicily, a lot of money pocketed from the sales. For over three decades Maurizio Zamparini has been a central figure in the diverse and ramshackle tribe of Italian football.

The merger of Venice and Mestre

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The first Zamparini to leave a trace in Italian football is the one who – after a brief experience in amateurs with Pordenone – in 1987 bought Venice, merged it with Mestre, unleashing the fatal wrath of both peoples, who hate each other despite being related. Years later he will say: “It was the biggest bullshit of my life, I didn’t take into account the sentimental aspect.” Under his management, the company modernized and he – with Walter Novellino on the bench – stamped the historic return to Serie A in 1997-98. He had left C2, promising the moon to the Venetians. And he had kept his promise. In the 90s he was among the very first in Italy to talk about owned stadiums, he wanted to build it on the mainland, bought land near the airport, presented a couple of projects – with architects, model, buffets, videos for the public – he pretends that a commercial center of his own rises next to the stadium, he engages in a ten-year battle with the Municipality of Venice but in the end – scorned and enraged – he loses. He leaves Venice in the summer of 2002. The modality still today is like an Italian comedy. On a dark and stormy night, Ezio Glerean, ds, his great friend Rino Foschi, and fourteen players loaded onto a coach bus: all transferred from Venice to Palermo, his new destination.

The years on the wave of Palermo

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In Palermo he takes over the company from Franco Sensi – who already owns Roma – after a smart move. He carries on the negotiations, realizes that they are niche in the club, so he directs his attention to Genoa and – thanks to some journalists and friends – he makes the deal “explode”. Stop everyone, we joked. Palermo is his real target. In the city they welcome him doubtfully, isn’t it that he went down to Sicily to do his business? He swears: “I didn’t come here for a commercial operation. I want the A in three years and then Europe ”. Another promise kept. Serie A comes 31 years after the last attendance in 2004, with Francesco Guidolin on the bench, Europe the following year. In reality, the Palermitans realize that the wind has changed with Zamparini. At the first of the Italian Cup – against Taranto – there are 33,000 spectators. The Palermo lives exciting seasons, slips ten consecutive championships in Serie A from 2004 to 2013 and proves to be the pedestal of many champions. The names: Luca Toni, Cavani, Dybala (his favorite), the world champions Barzagli, Zaccardo and Grosso, El Mudo Vazquez, El Flaco Pastore, then Miccoli, Amauri, Sirigu, Balzaretti, Belotti, Ilicic but also Kjaer, Di Michele, Glik, Darmian, Simplicio, Sorrentino, Mark Bresciano, Zauli. In the end – he left the property in 2018 – we realize that Zamparini was the longest-serving president, surpassing the eleven years (1970-1981) of the man – Renzo Barbera – to whom the stadium was named. The almanac says of four Uefa Cup qualifiers, two in the Europa League and the Italian Cup final lost in 2011 in Rome against Inter.

“I hate gentlemen, I prefer those who stand up to me”

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It starts from this premise: “I hate gentlemen, I prefer those who stand up to me”. The bond with two of them is very strong, Walter Novellino – the only one capable of facing him badly and chasing him from the locker room in the interval of a match – and Francesco Guidolin, whom Zamparini considered the best Italian coach and who also exonerated and recalled three times. With Luciano Spalletti he did not tie, a matter of skin, Zampa hated the choice of Spalletti’s black and funereal clothes, he claimed that he never laughed, once he said that it was “lugubrious”. The first to be expelled – in Venice – was Ferruccio Mazzola, Sandro’s brother; the last exonerated Bruno Tedino in Palermo. The accounting in these cases is variable, but let’s say that we can count on the 66 coaches employed in 31 years of honorable career and on the 51 exemptions. The list is very long. It is enough here to recall – in addition to the aforementioned – that he had two coaches of the national team – Gian Piero Ventura and Cesare Prandelli – he baptized various football masters such as Alberto Zaccheroni, Silvio Baldini, Gigi Delneri, Delio Rossi, he kicked out in a bad way two who today fight for the Scudetto like Stefano Pioli sacked in the championship not yet started, after a defeat in the Europa League (He said: “After sacking Pioli I immediately regretted it and I would have eaten a dick in anger”) and Gian Piero Gasperini and many solid technicians such as Gian Franco Bellotto, Stefano Colantuono, Davide Ballardini, Walter Zenga, Bortolo Mutti, Rino Gattuso, Beppe Iachini and finally an emerging, to whom he gave the first important bench: Roberto De Zerbi, framed as follows: “He was presumptuous, but good bike “. In 2015-16, in Palermo, he hits an unbeatable record. Eight coaches in one year. The sequence to make Fibonacci pale: Iachini, Ballardini, Viviani, Bosi, Tedesco, Bosi, Iachini, Novellino, Ballardini. And go in peace.

The storm and the futile reasons

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He had a habit, he practically never went to the stadium. He followed the games from home, on TV, and had them told by an executive, who phoned him at half-time and at the final whistle. He once said: “I have never imposed training on a coach.” Then the recorded laughter started. Every now and then he would come out with swashbuckling declarations: “Roma want Toni? He left Palermo with a cloud of accusations, including money laundering and false invoices. He has always reiterated that he is an honest person. He has always supported Udinese, his favorite team. He even tried to buy it once, at the beginning of the 90s. He went to dinner with Gino Pozzo and said: “I’ll give you Venice, you give me Udinese”. Like a sticker swap, but it didn’t work. Two marriages, five children, four with the first wife, Silvana, Greta, Diego, Andrea; the last one, Armando, with his partner Laura Giordani, and precisely the sudden and painful death of the young Armando, 23, which occurred on October 1st in London – definitively weakened him, taking away his strength and will to live, extinguishing his fury of a man who spent a lot of time for football, thirty years of thunder and lightning. Yet to look at him now was a nice storm, the kind that fill the sky with dark clouds and then lighten it with the rain, and then start again, in an endless game, as well as the many exonerated coaches, for futile reasons.