When I was growing up, cricket was fortunately still shown on freeview TV in England but football was already behind a paywall. My parents refused to shell out for Sky Sports so the only regular live football I could watch was Football Italia on Channel 4.
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However, that wasn't such a bad deal! James Richardson presented the Gazetta Football Italia show on Saturday mornings, usually sat with an espresso in the beautiful town square on some ancient Italian hilltop and talking through the ins and outs of all things Italian football.
That was followed by live coverage of a match on the Sunday and boy were they some games! The 90s was a golden age for Italian football with their club sides pulling in the best talent from across the globe including Ronaldo (the fat Brazilian one), Zidane and Batistuta to mention but a few alongside a whole host of domestic talent including Baggio, Maldini and Del Pierro.
The icon Football Italia theme
That domestic strength was a defining factor in Italy's dominance on the footballing world stage for 8 decades with their 4 World Cups and 6 final appearances bettered only by the Brazilians.
Their fall from grace then has been equally impressive with the Italian men's team failing to qualify for the last 2 tournaments and having been battered 4-1 in their final qualifying match for this year's World Cup, their chances of returning to the top table are now dependent on them overcoming Northern Ireland in a qualifier.
The bottom line is that if you're a football crazed Italian kid of 11 years old or younger then you've never even seen your side play at the World Cup. When reflecting back to how good Italian football was when I was that age, it's crazy to contemplate!
However, Italy are qualifying for World Cups in other sports most notably cricket! Is this the start of a golden era for the sport in the country?
I'm gonna throw my hat into the ring straight away to host Channel 4 or any other broadcaster's cricketing equivalent to Gazetta Football Italia - Gazetta Cricket Italia? Surely we can keep the theme tune and just replace 'Goooooolaccio' with 'Hooooowzatccio' and the rest just writes itself.
Joking aside, cricket has much deeper roots in Italy than you might first expect and those roots are intrinsically tangled with Italian football!
As with cricket all around the world, Italy's first taste of the sport came courtesy of British colonialism. None other than Lord Admiral Horatio Nelson is credited with organising the first recorded game of cricket in Italy in 1793. One could say he is 'The Godfather' of Italian cricket!
Nelson's ship the HMS Agamemnon was docked in Naples as the British looked to secure military support from King Ferdinand IV of the British blockade of Toulon during the French Revolutionary Wars. The game was part of a plan to attempt to recruit 6000 troops to support in those efforts.
image source. The score of 111 in cricket is known as 'Nelson' due to the common held belief that Nelson had one arm, one eye and one leg (he never actually lost a leg) and has always been an unlucky number for English teams
However it wasn't until the 19th Century that cricket really gained a foothold in Italy. Then as it had been at the end of the previous century, it was the British that were introducing their summer sport to the rest of the world.
Genoa Cricket & Athletic Club was founded by British expats in 1893. Renowned as being Italy's oldest football club, it's original emphasis was on cricket and athletics with football a secondary concern.
Overtime that balance shifted with the club being renamed as Genoa Cricket and Football Club the name it still holds. Genoa currently find themselves 15th in Serie A and fighting to stay in the top flight but in the early years of Italian football they were amongst the best clubs around, winning the Italian Football Championship 9 times between their inception and 1924.
Genoa's current away kit still pays tribute to their English roots
Unfortunately, the insistence that Genoa cricket club remained exclusively for British expats undoubtedly ended any possibility of the sport expanding in the region.
However, in 2007 a group of Genoa football fans relaunched the cricket club with an aim to being open to all ethnicities and religions. Their plan was remarkably successful as Genoa cricket club gained promotion to Serie A of the Italian cricket league within just 4 years of its formation.
Meanwhile just up the road in Milan an even more famous Italian football club can trace its roots back to cricket!
The mighty AC Milan. much like their Genoese cousins, was originally founded as the Milan Foot-Ball and Cricket Club in 1899 by English expatriate Herbert Kilpin.
The story goes that Kilpin, an industrialist in the textile industry based in the North of Italy who liked to have a drink, was sitting in a Milan tavern with a few of British chums when, after a few grappas, they got to reminiscing about back home and decided to found a football and cricket club in the city.
Kilpin was even responsible for what would become AC Milan's famous Red and Black stripes (Rossoneri). He choose the colours as he wanted Milan to be "a team of devils. Our colours will be red like flames and black like our opponents fear".
AC Milan pay tribute to their English founder and lover of both sports
AC Milan cricket club do still play in the top flight of Italian cricket but it'd be fair to say that AC Milan football club with their 19 Scudettos and 7 European Cups are the better known branch of the organisation.
In between those early days for both cricket and football, it's clear that one of the sports has blossomed and the other has fallen by the way side until now!
Lead by a hodgepodge of cricketers from around the world, Italy beat out a number of other associate nations to take their place alongside 19 other countries in crickets short-form show piece.
Credit has to go to former Australian Test batsman Joe Burns who choose to move to Italy following the death of his brother in 2024. While Burns has since been replaced as captain of the side and is not in the Italian World Cup squad, his profile helped attract others with Italian ancestry to join the cause.
Aussie brothers Harry and Ben Manenti (the clue is in the name) also opted to spend their winters playing in the Northern Hemisphere. They were joined by Emilio Gay, a young English top order batsman whose mother is Italian. Unfortunately for Italy, Gay opted to tour with the England Lions this winter and at least for now, has put his Italian career on hold while he chases higher honors with a Test playing nation.
A couple of other well known names, although not quite so Italian, have also been brought in. Wayne Madsen, South African in origin but a player who has had a brilliant career in English county cricket is now captaining the side.
Madsen is a firm favourite of the hosts of the BBC podcast Tailenders the self-declared 'losely cricket based podcast' and has appeared on the show a number of times including as recently as last month in honour of Italy qualifying for the 2026 World Cup
The big hitting JJ Smuts who won 13 T20i caps for South Africa alongside 6 ODI appearances for the Proteas will be another name familiar to cricket fans who will be playing for the Azzurri this winter.
Grant Stewart who has spent the last 7 years as a county player for Kent is the only other player in the Italy squad with First Class experience with the remainder of the squad either young hopefuls or old pros.
A great example would be Marcus Campopiano, a man who made a few appearances for Sussex's 2nd XI but is now employed by my county, Surrey, as their Assistant Strength And Conditioning Coach. He will get to play against the likes of Will Jacks and Sam Curran, players that he will have supported throughout their careers.
It's the stuff of fairytales, reminiscent of some of the clashes you get in the early rounds of the FA Cup.
Italy start their T20 World Cup campaign against Scotland tomorrow morning. Remember that Italy actually qualified ahead of the Scotts who are only part of World Cup due to Bangladesh pulling out.
They then go up against Nepal before the real eye catching games against England and West Indies with all 4 of their mathces being played in the cricketing Meccas of Eden Gardens and the Wankhede.
Can they pull off a famous first World Cup win and put Italy back on the cricketing map? Perhaps as was the case 130 years ago, it'll be cricket that gives Italian football the shot in the arm it dearly needs.
Forza Italia!
