Giancarlo Antognoni

Giancarlo Antognoni
Giancarlo Antognoni (2011)
Personnel
birthday	April 1, 1954
place of birth	Marsciano ,  Italy
size	179 cm
position	midfield
Men's
Years	station	Games (goals) 1
1970-1972	Astimacobi	27 0(4)
1972-1987	AC Florence	341 (61)
1987-1989	Lausanne Sports	51 0(7)
National team
Years	selection	Games (goals)
1973	Italy U-21	1 0(0)
1974-1983	Italy	73 0(7)
1 Only league games are given.

Giancarlo Antognoni (born April 1, 1954 in Marsciano , Province of Perugia , Italy ) is a former Italian football player .

Career

He joined his first football club, the Piedmontese provincial club Astimacobi from Asti , at the age of 16. In the first season he played six games, but in his second season Antognoni was part of the team. Word of his good performance got around, so that in 1971 he was called up for a training camp for the Italian junior national team. Since this was carried out in Tuscany , scouts from AC Florence were looking for talent; Antognoni noticed this so much that he moved from Astimacobi to Fiorentina in the summer of 1972 for 150,000 lire. In the first season, the then coach Nils Liedholm relied on Antognoni and formed a young team around him.

Giancarlo Antognoni played in Florence for 15 years and became an absolute darling with 341 appearances and 61 goals. Due to his consistently good performance, he was considered for the first time for the national team squad in 1974 at the age of 20 and made his debut on November 20, 1974 in the 1: 3 defeat in the Netherlands . As a result, he took on the role of playmaker like at Fiorentina . In 1981 he suffered a double skull base fracture in a point game. Antognoni struggled with death, but was able to continue his career. At the 1982 World Cup , he played a major role in Italy's World Cup victory, although he missed the final due to an injury he sustained in the semi-final game against Poland . He played his last international match in 1983 against the ČSSR .

In 1987 Antognoni decided to end his football career with Lausanne-Sports in Switzerland . Many Fiorentina fans remained loyal to their idol and so it happened that truckloads of Fiorentina fans drove to Switzerland every weekend to watch Antognoni play. In 1989 he said goodbye at the Stadio Artemio Franchi at a charity match between the Italian world championship team from 1982 and an international all-star team.

Before the game, he gave a speech in which he explained that due to the incredible support from the supporters of Fiorentina, he had never accepted the offers he had received from various Italian top clubs, although he would have had the opportunity to play Scudetti and to collect international trophies. The audience at Artemio Franchi burst into spontaneous applause for several minutes. When Antognoni skilfully used a penalty in the 73rd minute, the mood exploded again. Shortly before the end of the game, Giancarlo Antognoni was substituted and left for the last time the grass on which he had led the game of Fiorentina for 15 years and on which he had matured into a member of the national team.

Giancarlo Antognoni is still considered one of the best players ever to wear the colors of Fiorentina. With his 341 appearances, he is the club's record player. He then worked as a sports director in Florence.

successes

• Coppa Italia : 1974/75
• World Champion : 1982

Web links

Commons : Giancarlo Antognoni  - collection of images, videos and audio files

• Giancarlo Antognoni in the database of weltfussball.de