Giancarlo Galavotti, who has died at the age of 78, covered English football for La Gazzetta dello Sport from 1979 to 2011. HIs friend Steve Howard, former Sun sports writer, pays tribute.
I first met Giancarlo Galavotti on May 27, 1985 in a Liverpool hotel restaurant.
How can I be so precise?
Because the next day we flew out to Brussels with the Liverpool team that would contest the European Cup Final with Juventus at the Heysel Stadium 24 hours later.
We immediately forged a bond that would last until he retired as football correspondent of La Gazzetta dello Sport in 2011.
If it was a difficult time for everyone in Brussels then no more so than for Giancarlo.
To be present and have to report on the deaths of so many of his fellow countrymen – directly or indirectly at the hands of football fans from the country that was now his home – was particularly hard.
If it did cloud his future judgment then no-one could be all that surprised.
Giancarlo, who died in Thailand just short of his 79th birthday, was a familiar, daunting figure for many years at football stadia all over England – many afternoons and evenings spent happily enough (I think) at Stamford Bridge and Wembley.
He was a bright, educated man who was famous for speaking the Queen’s English with more cultured, nuanced understanding than many of the other members of the press box.
You crossed him at your peril. He was ferociously ironic, his sarcasm a molten pot percolating away never far from the surface.
English clubs were now making their mark in European football – winning six consecutive European Cup Finals between 1976 and 1982.
We liked to put it down to the inherent toughness of players from within the British Isles and a deep disinclination to give up on a cause.
Giancarlo, more a believer in the natural beauty of things, always found this rather humorous.
And when at some point in the future another of our sides would be undone by the superior intellect and technique of our Continental counterparts, he would smile and say: “So where was the famous English steel today…..?”
A man who never suffered fools gladly, he was attracted to the more intelligent footballer with men like Kevin Keegan, Liam Brady, Graeme Souness and Ray Wilkins sharing dinner and advice with him either in Italy or at the refined restaurants of Giancarlo’s adopted Chelsea.
When he first arrived in London in 1979 he found himself plunged into a regime “without wine and recognisable sustenance”. Soon enough, though, he was living the life of a bon vivant.
While many sports journalists could still be found entertaining at the less sophisticated end of the market, Giancarlo had progressed to Knightsbridge’s San Lorenzo, a favourite watering hole of Princess Diana, and Hammersmith’s River Cafe.
As for his views on English football, he never became an Anglophile like Sweden’s Peter Wennman and was always waiting for our game to catch up with the rest of the world – and would do so until his retirement.
The pursuit of big-name England managers by an FA he always preferred to treat with barely concealed contempt was another constant source of amusement.
He once said of Fabio Capello, whom he thought should never have taken the job: “Well, it was you who decided to pay him £6 million a year. And you expect him to learn English as well?”
As for Sven Goran Eriksson, he looked at the whole saga as an absurd, inane Svenny Hill comedy.
One of my last memories of Giancarlo was when we arrived at the up-market resort of Sun City where the English press was based at the group stage of the 2010 World Cup in South Africa.
Once again it would prove to be a disastrous campaign, the last knockings for the so-called Golden Generation.
We were too early for check-in so we established a base camp at the Sun City golf club.
As he waited and fretted and grew increasingly impatient, he turned to whoever might be listening and said: “These people, you know they treat you like second-class citizens……”
At this point, springboks, cheetahs, zebras and other assorted South African wild life could be seen darting in and out of undergrowth on the sun-dappled fairways.
Then a bowl of steaming pasta was placed in front of him with a glass of wine.
God bless him, he didn’t blink an eye.
