Enzo's First Adventure

Motto bene @kushiro

Anyone know the West Brom equivalent of foxestalk? I'd like to get some Baggies input on this stuff but I can't find a site that looks anything like as active as this one.

Part Two

Under new boss Brian Little, Albion started the season well, and this was his early assessment of Maresca's contribution:

He's a smashing footballer, and technically excellent. I do feel though that I have to play him with two other midfielders. He's great in tight situations and finds a lot of space, but he can be overloaded and overrun if it's two against two. Defensive responsibility is not his strong point yet.

Little decided to play him as a substitute for much of the autumn, prefering Andy Townsend, who they'd just signed from Middlesbrough. When he came back into the starting line up he scored this stunning goal at Palace:

After the Palace game Enzo said that this season he'd swapped the Superman T-shirt for a Bart Simpson one. But with no goals in two months he didn't get a chance to show it off - and before the Palace game he decided it was bringing him bad luck and got rid of it.

Presumably, had he scored wearing the Bart Simpson shirt he wouldn't have gone quite this far:

A week after that Palace game, Albion lost 3-0 at Tranmere, but the local paper singled out Enzo for praise, saying he was the team's 'main source of creativity', and was 'full of endeavour for the entire 90 minutes'.

Somehow, Little saw things completely differently, and in post-match interviews, gave his opinion of the Italian:

A week later he scored again, 'dancing past the keeper' as Albion beat Portsmouth 3-2 at The Hawthorns. That's the only one of his five Albion goals where there's no online video available.

Throughout the autumn there was speculation about how long Albion could hang on to him. Parma had bid five million, but Albion wanted seven million (for comparison, Leicester broke their transfer record that December, paying three million for Darren Eadie).

His final goal in England was another gem - it came on November 27th, in a 2-2 home draw v Sheffield United, with press reports describing his performance as 'pure genius'. 

The goal is 40 seconds into this clip:

With home gates barely making it into five figures, Albion were resigned to selling Enzo sooner or later, and in January he joined Juventus for 4 million.  He'd recentlly swapped a 'rusty old Mini Metro' for a new Fiat Brava, and that was a metaphor for the switch from the Hawthorns to the home of the Agnelli family.

Brian Little was there for only slightly longer. A disastrous run of one win in 16 games led to his sacking in early March, and Gary Megson stepped into the manager's shoes to save Albion from relegaiton to the third tier, before taking them up to the Premier League in 2002.

Little never worked at that level again. But for 19 year old Enzo Maresca, the story had only just begun.

Fantastic as usual 

Great Post and great read/watch!

Should try to send these posts to Enzo to see.  I'm sure it would bring back memories for him.

Great work I have really enjoyed these.

When I read the thread title i imagined him and Pearson fighting off a pack of wolves in the woods.  

On 18/06/2023 at 20:27, kushiro said:

Anyone know the West Brom equivalent of foxestalk? I'd like to get some Baggies input on this stuff but I can't find a site that looks anything like as active as this one.

https://wbaunofficial.org.uk/forumdisplay.php?fid=4

Great work, thank you. 

Time for a bit of a deep dive further into Enzo's arrival in England. 

Let's start with a clip of his second appearance for Albion. It's September 29th 1998, a Tuesday night fixture away at Oxford's wonderful old Manor Ground. It's a game I can actually remember, though I wasn't there. I had just moved in to a flat down the road, and this was the first time there had been an evening game. I can recall how clearly you could hear the roar of the crowd - and Oxford fans made quite a noise that night as they won 3-0. 

After Albion had been completely outplayed in the first half, Enzo came on as sub at half time. 

The match was being covered by Central TV, whose expert summariser was Ron Atkinson, back on familiar territory. He'd made his name as an Oxford player in the 1960s and 70s.

Now let's listen to what Ron says when Maresca comes on:

What??

I had to listen to that a couple of times to make sure I heard it right,  but no - he definitely says 'He came round my house the other week to feed the dogs'.

This is where Big Ron was living at the time, near Birmingham:

So now we can picture the scene. A cute young Enzo enters this plush sitting room, and an even cuter little dog rushes up to him, wagging its tail.

Did he go round to feed them when Ron wasn't there, entrusted with the keys to the house? 

Atkinson had been Sheffield Wednesday boss until the summer just gone, but was now between jobs. What had he been doing at that time - 'the other week', as he put it? Had he been away somewhere?

Well, nearly three weeks before that Oxford game he had indeed been away. This is the Daily Mirror from September 11th:

So is that the story? When Atkinson flew to South Africa for talks on becoming their new boss, a young Italian, who'd only been in England a month, was given the job of looking after his dogs?

Atkinson eventually decided not to take the position in South Africa, saying he wanted to take another stab at club management.  So he was still available to work for ITV. 

If you go back and listen to what Ron said next on that Oxford-West Brom commentary, we get another hint about how Enzo came to be Ron's dog-sitter. He says 'his mate's just come on for Villa tonight in the European match'. 

He's talking about Fabio Ferraresi - another young Italian who'd been brought to the UK on a free by agent Gianni Paladini (recall the Sports Argus clipping in the first post in this thread).  He was at Aston Villa, and the European match Ron is talking about is a UEFA Cup tie in Norway v Stromsgodset which Villa won 3-0 (Stan Colllymore hattrick). Ferraresi came on as sub for Ian Taylor.

So while Ron is working on one match, he's keeping a very close eye on a different game - taking a close interest in the progress of another Italian youngster. And this is pre-smart phones, of course, so he couldn't just glance down at his screen for an update from Norway.

Why was he so interested in Ferraresi?  

That Sports Argus article actually mentioned a third young Italian brought over by Paladini. As well as Maresca and Ferraresi, it talks about Francesco Sanetti, who had signed for Sheffield Wednesday in the spring. Wednesday's manager at the time was - Ron Atkinson.

Hmmm. Ron seems to be a key figure in this tale of young Italians arriving in England on free transfers. 

And there's one more Italian we should mention. One of Ron's best friends in the West Midlands was a fellow called Renato Pagliari. 

He was a singer, and he became quite famous.

He had the Christmas Number One in 1982 with this:

The woman who sang on the record was called Hilary Lester, though in the video it's a different woman you can see. Since the track was recorded, Lester had moved on to work with different artists.

Big Ron once even asked Renato to take the microphone and sing for the crowd before a match. He was a big Villa fan - so maybe when Ferraresi arrived they were introduced - and then Ferraresi told him about Enzo, and then they all went for a meal at Renato's son's restaurant (which was in Tamworth) and Ron mentioned he was off to South Africa, and...

Who knows. It's all speculation.

But I think we can be pretty sure, considering all of the above, that Enzo and Renato would have met in those early days in the West Midlands. 

Perhaps at a future press conference someone can ask him if the names 'Ron Atkinson' and 'Renato Pagliari' mean anything to him. 

And maybe 'Save Your Love' can become the new track we run out to at the King Power.

@kushiro - You’ve outdone yourself !

Top quality sleuthing….