[Sport] ITALIANS ABROAD: THE BUNDESLIGA

[King_of_darkcsbd]

With a habit of knocking the German national team out of major tournaments, defeating them at the semi-final stage of the 1970 and 2006 World Cups and the final of 1982, it is probably unsurprising that there are so few Italians to have plied their trade in the country. However, with the world’s second largest po[CENSORED]tion of Italian nationals outside of Italy living within its borders at close to one million people, that Italian footballers have struggled to flourish within the German football pyramid is extraordinary. With the German economic boom after the Second World War, large waves of immigrants from Italy decided to relocate there, with increased freedom of movement regulations in 1961 reportedly witnessing nearly 600,000 migrate. Despite the increasing dual-nationality footballers, the first Italian to appear in the Bundesliga, Raffael Tonello, was born on the peninsula, but spent the entirety of an unremarkable career in Germany with Sportfreunde Siegen, Uerdingen 05, Kickers Offenbach, Eintracht Frankfurt II and Fortuna Dusseldorf. After starting his career with Dusseldorf in the top-flight in 1994, the striker proceeded to fall through the various tiers of the professional game and never returned. By contrast the man that followed him, Ruggiero Rizzitelli, was a Serie A star striker, arriving from a spell with Torino where he struck 30 times in 60 league appearances, but was relegated. Possibly expecting countryman Giovanni Trapattoni to help his integration at Bayern Munich, Rizzitelli scored 11 goals to pick up a title medal in 1996/97 before spending most of his second year in Bavaria on the bench. The first German-born Italians, Giuseppe Catizone and Luciano Velardi arguably tasted greater success on the wider German footballing landscape, but would only spend fleeting spells in the Bundesliga with Stuttgart and Bochum at the turn of the millennium. Eleven years after Rizzitelli, the first true Italian star arrived. It cost Bayern a modest €12 million to steal Luca Toni away from Fiorentina a year after he had helped the Azzurri win the 2006 World Cup on German soil. It appeared to be something of a watershed moment for Italian imports, as 58 goals in 89 games across two campaigns helped secure a domestic double in 2007/08. The second of his two finishes in the DFB Pokal final versus Borussia Dortmund that season was a crucial extra-time winner. However, a huge row with coach Louis van Gaal and the Bayern hierarchy saw Toni’s contract terminated a year early in June 2010 as he returned to Serie A with Genoa. With on-loan defender Massimo Oddo also falling to settle at the club, their second Italian experiment was over as quickly as the first.

Edited May 17, 2020 by YaKuZa--BoSs
Closed Topic/complete 1 day.

[YaKuZa--BoSs]

Remember you need put [SPORT] in the tittle.

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