Giorgio Chinaglia

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Giorgio Chinaglia (born January 24, 1947 in Carrara , † April 1, 2012 in Naples (Florida) , USA ) was an Italian football player who won the championship with Lazio Rome in 1974 and later played for Cosmos New York .

Life

Beginnings in Wales and Serie C

Chinaglia spent the first years of his life in Carrara, the city of his birth; at the age of eight he moved to Great Britain , where his father found a job as a guest worker in the Welsh city ​​of Cardiff . He began his football career in 1962 with Swansea Town ; He signed his first professional contract with the then English second division team in early 1965. During the return series of the 1965/66 season, the center forward wore the Welsh jersey six times, but could not save them from relegation. So he moved to the Italian Serie C to Massese Calcio from Massa , a year later to the traditional Neapolitan club SSD Internapoli , where he played for two years and scored 25 goals.

Career with Lazio

His successful time in Naples attracted the interest of major clubs, and in 1968 he moved to Lazio , who was in the Serie A had risen. His second game in the first division made him a crowd favorite: he scored the winning goal to make it 1-0 against reigning champions AC Milan .

Despite a temporary relegation with Lazio, Chinaglia was one of the best strikers in Italy in the first half of the 1970s. He had his strongest season in 1973/74 when he led Lazio to their first championship and thus their first title since winning the Cup in 1958 and at the same time became the league's top scorer. His penalty goal in the 60th minute in the last home game of the season against Foggia Calcio on the penultimate matchday secured the title and he was celebrated accordingly by the 90,000 Tifosi at the Stadio Olimpico .

In later years, Chinaglia was named Lazios Player of the Century.

Failures in the national team

Chinaglia had aroused the interest of national coach Ferruccio Valcareggi early on, who took him to the football World Cup in 1970 , although he was not part of the 22-man squad. He made his Azzurri debut in 1972 against Bulgaria.

With great hope he drove to Germany for the 1974 World Cup , where the Italian team, as the current runner-up, was one of the big favorites in group four. Chinaglia was seeded as a center forward but disappointed in the first game against Haiti ; Coach Ferruccio Valcareggi exchanged him after 70 minutes of play against Pietro Anastasi , the center forward of Juventus Turin . In the second group game against Argentina , which ended in a draw, he was only on the bench. In the last game against Poland a draw would have been enough. Chinaglia played again from the beginning, but couldn't use his chances and his team lost 2-1. As in 1966 , Italy was surprisingly eliminated from the tournament after the preliminary round.

Chinaglia only made 14 appearances (4 goals) in the national team.

End in New York

In 1976, at the age of 29, he moved to the USA for the New York Cosmos . The main reason for this was that his wife Connie, a US citizen, wanted to go back home. He forced his move to New York, where he had already bought a house in Englewood , by simply calling in at the New York Cosmos office and demanding his engagement; otherwise, he threatened, he would open his own soccer franchise. In eight years at Cosmos, he became the best goal-getter in the North American Soccer League . He scored a total of 193 goals in 213 games, and was the league's top scorer four times in a row. Footballer of the Year - " Most Valuable Player " - he was named in 1981. He played at Cosmos until 1983, at times with Pelé , Franz Beckenbauer and Carlos Alberto .

Club management

In 1981 the owner of Cosmos, Warner Bros. had to evade the threat of a hostile takeover by the Australian media tycoon Rupert Murdoch and therefore got rid of some parts of the business, including Global Soccer , which held the majority in Cosmos. This company was taken over by Chinaglia who got the shots at Cosmos. But he did not have the means to continue the franchise, which had never reached profitability, as before. The time of the expensive stars was over, with a rapid decline of Cosmos set in, which in turn intensified the erosion of the NASL. The death of the glamorous NASL era finally came in early 1985 when Chinaglia was supposed to present legal and financial guarantees for the coming season at a meeting with the top of the association, but could only offer to throw the NASL lawyer out the window, which he wanted to avoid the meeting took place in a New York-style skyscraper. Professional soccer was then reduced to the Major Indoor Soccer League in the USA and only the youth practiced at Cosmos. Chinaglia's Cosmos was thus practically materially without value and the franchise including trophies ended with the former Cosmos general manager G. Peppe Pinton, who in 2010 sold the naming rights for a new company (→ New York Cosmos (2010) ).

In 1983 Chinaglia also became President of Lazio in Rome. 1985 driven by Mr club was relegated to the Serie B from.

In 2006 he worked as an expert for the US television broadcaster ABC at the soccer World Cup in Germany . In July 2006, was documentary : "The Extraordinary Story of the New York Cosmos Once in a Lifetime" ( "football from another planet: The Story of the New York Cosmos") premiered in which Chinaglia like almost all the stars of the US clubs commented on its story.

arrest warrant

In November 2007, Chinaglia was sentenced to pay a fine of 4.2 million euros after a scandal over alleged price manipulation of Lazio shares. He had reported to Italian media that a Hungarian pharmaceutical company was interested in acquiring Lazio. As a result, the association's shares (which has been listed on the Milan Stock Exchange since 2000) soared, even though the information was incorrect.

Chinaglia is also accused of threatening and blackmailing Lazio president Claudio Lotito. He allegedly put pressure on Lotito to get him to sell the club.

In July 2008 a new arrest warrant was issued against Chinaglia.

Giorgio Chinaglia died on April 1st, 2012 at the age of 65 in Florida from the consequences of a heart attack. His first marriage to Connie, née Eruzione, cousin of Mike Eruzione , who in 1980 shot the USA in the finals of the Olympic ice hockey tournament against the Soviet Union to a sensational 4-3 victory and thus laid the basis for the later gold medal win he won in 1970 met, gave birth to three children: Giorgio Jr., Stephanie and Cynthia. His second marriage to Angela Cacioppo resulted in the sons Anthony and Donald.

Clive Toye , who hired as manager of New York Cosmos Chinaglia and later became president of the NASL, described Chinaglia in 2011 as a "lying bastard" and "human junk". Franz Beckenbauer considered Chinaglia unsuitable for a career as a diplomat.

Oddities

In 1974, a single sung by Chinaglia, I'm Football Crazy, was released on RCA.

literature

  • Risoli, Mario: Arrivederci Swansea: The Giorgio Chinaglia Story , Mainstream Publishing Paperback, 2000, ISBN 1840182830 . (English)

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ movieworlds.com
  2. ↑ The film was established on Youtube in 2013
  3. ↑ Oberösterreichische Nachrichten online, July 22, 2008, Camorra wanted to buy Lazio Rome ( Memento from July 31, 2008 in the Internet Archive )
  4. ^ E 'morto Giorgio Chinaglia, la bandiera della Lazio aveva 65 anni. www.ilmessaggero.it, April 1, 2012, archived from the original on April 2, 2012 ; Retrieved April 1, 2012 (Italian).
  5. ^ Douglas Martin: Giorgio Chinaglia, Italian Star and the Cosmos' Leader, Dies at 65 , New York Times , 2012-04-03
  6. ^ Ian Saunders: Interview with Clive Toye , Society for American Soccer History, Feb.15, 2016.
  7. ↑ discogs
personal data
SURNAME Chinaglia, Giorgio
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Italian soccer player
DATE OF BIRTH January 24, 1947
PLACE OF BIRTH Carrara , Italy
DATE OF DEATH April 1, 2012
Place of death Naples , Florida , USA