Ferruccio Mazzola

Ferruccio Mazzola
Ferruccio Mazzola as captain of Lazio
Personnel
birthday	February 1, 1945
place of birth	Turin ,  Italy
date of death	May 7, 2013
Place of death	Rome ,  Italy
size	168 cm
position	midfield
Men's
Years	station	Games (goals) 1
1963-1964	Inter Milan	0 0(0)
1964-1965	Marzotto Valdagno	22 0(6)
1965-1967	AC Venice	50 (13)
1967	Inter Milan	1 0(0)
1967-1968	Calcio Lecco	18 0(1)
1968-1971	Lazio Rome	85 (11)
1971-1972	AC Florence	16 0(1)
1972-1974	Lazio Rome	1 0(0)
1974-1977	AC Sant'Angelo 1907	69 0(3)
1977	Edmonton Drillers
Stations as a trainer
Years	station
1981-1983	AC Cynthia
1983-1986	AC Siena
1986-1987	SPAL Ferrara
1987-1988	Calcio Venice
1988-1989	AC Siena
1989-1990	AC Perugia
1990-1992	AC specia
1992-1993	US Alessandria
1994	Modena FC
1995	US Aosta
1 Only league games are given.

Ferruccio Mazzola (born February 1, 1945 in Turin , † May 7, 2013 in Rome ) was an Italian football player and coach . The son of Valentino Mazzola and brother of Sandro Mazzola was active in his active career for Inter Milan , Lazio Rome and AC Florence and surprisingly won the first Italian championship for the club with the Laziali in 1974.

He later became a coach, but did not get out of engagements with lower-class clubs. In the last years of his life, Mazzola became one of the main accusers against doping in football and criticized his former club Inter Milan in particular. Ferruccio Mazzola died in May 2013 at the age of 68 of complications from a lung disease.

Player career

Ferruccio Mazzola was born in 1945 in the northern Italian metropolis of Turin. His father was Valentino Mazzola , the star player of the so-called Grande Torino , the big team of AC Turin . Valentino Mazzola was a member of the team that brought five Italian championships to the Stadio Filadelfia between 1942 and 1949, only interrupted by the war-related break in play , and was wiped out by Superga in May 1949 in the plane crash .

Like his father, Ferruccio Mazzola embarked on a career as a football player and began it in Milan , incidentally together with his three years older brother Sandro , at the local club Internazionale . After going through the youth department, Ferruccio Mazzola was appointed to the first team of Inter Milan in 1963, but could not prevail there under coach Helenio Herrera . In his first season, Serie A 1963/64 , he didn't make a single game and was then sold to Marzotto Valdagno . After finishing sixth in Serie C in 1964/65 and 22 league games with six goals, Mazzola moved on to AC Venice in the summer of 1965 . With first place in the second-rate Serie B , the team succeeded in promotion to Serie A in 1966 , but did not succeed in relegation the following year. After relegation with Venezia, Mazzola returned to Inter Milan, where he was only under contract for a very short time and a little later was deported to Calcio Lecco , just relegated from Serie A. In Lecco , Ferruccio Mazzola played second division football for a season and was only just able to prevent relegation to third division. He then went to Lazio Rome in the summer of 1968 , which after many years of first division football was now in the lowlands of Serie B. Under the Argentine coach Juan Carlos Lorenzo and with Ferruccio Mazzola as midfield director, the club succeeded in the series B in 1968/69 with first place, the sovereign ascent in the first division, in which they could hold in the following season with eighth place . 1970/71 , however, the relegation followed and Ferruccio Mazzola left Lazio for the time being.

After a year at Fiorentina , for which Mazzola made sixteen Serie A games in 1971/72 and scored one goal, the midfielder returned to Lazio in 1972. In the next two years in Rome was Mazzola part of that great team of Lazio, the team coached by Tommaso Maestrelli and with players like Giorgio Chinaglia , Luciano Re Cecconi and Giuseppe Wilson first as a newly promoted third place in the 1972-73 Serie A finished and a A year later on the penultimate matchday by a 1-0 win against US Foggia secured the championship title. But this first championship for Lazio Rome in its club history and at the same time also the greatest success in the football career of Ferruccio Mazzola experienced this more as a reservist than as a regular. After returning to the Laziali , he only played one league game.

In the summer of 1974 Ferruccio Mazzola, who incidentally never made an international match for Italy, left Lazio Rome and ended his career in the following years at AC Sant'Angelo 1907 and the Canadian club Edmonton Drillers . There Mazzola's career ended in 1977 at the age of 32.

Coaching career

After the end of his active football career, Ferruccio Mazzola became a coach. His first position was AC Cynthia from 1981 to 1983. He then worked for AC Siena from 1983 to 1986 , now in Serie A, but in the 80s still to be found in the third-class C1 series . Mazzola was relegated to the fourth division with Siena , but managed to return to the third division and only narrowly failed in his last coaching year there because of promotion to Serie B. In 1986 he took over the coaching position at SPAL Ferrara , one in the fifties and Sixties first-class club, meanwhile only third class and played a very appealing third division season 1986/87 with fourth place.

Ferruccio Mazzola did not get higher than the third division in his other coaching stations either. He was still in charge of AC Venice, AC Perugia and AC Spezia , among others . In 1995 Mazzola had his last coaching position at US Aosta in the deepest amateur field.

successes

As a player

• Italian championship : 1 ×

1973/74 with Lazio Rome

• Series B : 2 ×

1965/66 with AC Venice

1968/69 with Lazio Rome

• Alpine Cup : 1 ×

1971 with Lazio Rome

As a trainer

• Series C2 : 1 ×

1984/85 with AC Siena

doping

In 2004, Ferruccio Mazzola published a book describing practices among the famous Inter Milan team in the 1960s, known as the Grande Inter . Accordingly, coach Helenio Herrera gave his players pills before games. Mazzola suspected stimulants in them and sees the early death of some Inter players of this time as a result. In fact, for example, the great Inter captain Armando Picchi died of cancer in 1971 at the age of 35, defender Giacinto Facchetti also died of cancer in 2006 at the age of 64, plus a number of other deaths. After Mazzola's statements, Inter Milan filed a defamation suit against the former player, but lost it.

In 2008 Mazzola described an incident in which Herrera and his brother Sandro were given pills in their coffee after they had refused to take them. Mazzola carried over the practices described for Inter Milan to his other stations in Florence and Lazio Rome, especially at Fiorentina there were many early deaths among former players, there is even talk of a curse of Fiorentina .

Web links

• Ferruccio Mazzola in the database of weltfussball.de
• Biography of Mazzola

Individual evidence

1. ↑ gazzetta.it Ferruccio Mazzola died
2. ^ Zeit.de doping at Inter Milan
3. ↑ cycling4fans.de allegations against Herrera
4. ↑ 11freunde.de Curse of Fiorentina