Blast from the Past no.59: Attilio Lombardo

27 January 2017 at 10:03 am

“Goooooooool Lazio!” they would scream on parks and playgrounds across Britain – a nation bewitched by the infectiously funky theme tune to the new Channel 4 show Football Italia. Only years later would we learn that the shouty man in the song wasn’t saying Goooool Lazio at all; he was saying golazo (obviously). But who really cared that we were singing the words wrong. All that mattered was that we could watch countless net-busters by exotic European stars and enjoy James Richardson translate Corriere dello Sport over a Sunday morning espresso. We were in love.

Only by understanding England’s admiration for Serie A in the 1990s can you truly appreciate the dizzying mixture of disbelief and jubilation felt by Crystal Palace fans when it was announced in the summer of 1997 that the newly promoted Eagles had signed Attilio Lombardo.

The slap-headed midfield maestro was the instantly recognisable star of the Sampdoria side that mixed it with Milan at the start of the decade. A revered international and probing playmaker whose silkiness epitomised everything that made Italian football more sophisticated than its English equivalent. Him at Palace? Mamma mia that’s a spicy transfer.

“To say I was gobsmacked at the news was a huge understatement. I was happily surprised, excited and full of mass delight. There were literally street parties in south London,” recalled Palace fan Rob Dave Sayers, who learned of the seismic news via Teletext.

In fact, Lombardo had fallen on slightly hard times in Italy. A move from Sampdoria to Juventus in 1995 had not worked out and the previous season he had failed to score a single goal for the Old Lady.

Not that Palace fans cared. Thousands made the journey to Goodison Park to watch the Bald Eagle (he even shared a nickname with his new club, it just got better) make his debut against Everton on a sweltering August day on which he was the coolest man in the stadium.

“Even though Lombardo was 31 years old, he looked incredibly light on his feet. He seemed to just float and hover over the turf. Inevitably he opened the scoring with a deadly piece of skill followed by a lethal stab home, then he magically won us a penalty,” remembered a Palace fan on the Holmesdale forum.

Palace beat the Toffees 2-1 in their first game back in the top flight, with Lombardo an instant hero.

“Just one Lombardo, give him to me,” sang the ecstatic Eagles fans to the tune of that Cornetto advert. A man who had previously rubbed shoulders with Gianluca Vialli, Alessandro del Piero and Ruud Gullit was playing in the same team as Marc Edworthy, Bruce Dyer and Simon Rodger. This was really happening.

Lombardo scored again in away victories against Leeds (a peach of a solo goal) and Wimbledon, leaving Steve Coppell’s side 10th in the table by November.

The midfielder’s form even earned him a recall to the Italy side, but he was injured on international duty and then suffered a knock in a home defeat by Liverpool in early December.

His spell on the sidelines proved costly. By the time Lombardo returned to fitness in March, Palace were bottom of the league and they had signed Tomas Brolin.

The capture of the rotund Swede was actually the least of the Eagles’ problems. Bigger ones were that they still hadn’t won a home league game all season and appeared to be facing certain relegation.

Lombardo’s return to the starting line-up coincided with Palace’s first win in four months as the Italian scored in a shock 2-1 victory at Newcastle.

But the survival battle turned to farce when Coppell took up a new role “director of football development” and Lombardo replaced him as manager, despite having no coaching experience.

The midfielder’s rudimentary command of English was also the stuff of legend. It was rumoured that he spent his early days at Selhurst Park bidding his team-mates “hello” instead of goodbye because in Italian they use the same word (ciao) for both.

The Palace board’s solution to this problem was to appoint Brolin as Lombardo’s “interpreter” – thereby creating a unorthodox managerial partnership that has still never been matched for its sheer silliness.

“This part of the great man’s time in SE25 was so traumatic that I’ve erased it from my memory banks,” said one Palace fan of the “experiment”.

It was little surprise when the motley duo failed to stave off relegation (although Palace did finally win a home game – in April), yet Lombardo’s love affair with the Eagles remained strong and he committed his future to the club for the following season in the second tier.

Sure enough, the one-time star of Football Italia duly started banging in the goals against Oxford, Norwich and Bury, but the financially stricken club failed to fulfil their side of the bargain and he was sold to Lazio in January in a bid to ward off administration.

It probably wasn’t a bad move in hindsight. While Palace languised in the second division, Lombardo ended the season winning a European Cup Winners’ Cup medal. It’s this kind of thing that still makes Palace fans grateful that they were ever able to enjoy Lombardo at all.

“Looking back, Attilio’s time at Palace seems so brief now. But during those 50 or so games, he achieved legendary status amongst the Eagles faithful,” said one fan.

You’ll hear that the struggling Palace squad currently at Sam Allardyce’s disposal is, on paper, the best the Eagles have ever had. But they don’t have a player of Lombardo’s class.

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Blast from the Past no.59: Attilio Lombardo