Gianluca Pagliuca: champion away from Emilia.

Parliamone, by Luca Pacini, Bolognamania, May 2001

The story of Gianluca Pagliuca, the last bulwark of Bologna's defense, is full of successes. Unfortunately for Bologna, however, this player - born and raised in the shadow of the Two Towers - has won everything that there was to win far from his native Emilia.

Florence, April 2001

After a season on the bench with the main team (without ever stepping on the field), Pagliuca leaves home and friends and moves to Genoa, catching up with another prodigal son of Bologna at Mantovani's Sampdoria: Roberto Mancini. The day that Pagliuca will never forget was May 8, 1988 - that day, Vujadin Boskov decides this 1,90 m goalkeeper is ready for his first match in Serie A. And the debut is fortunate: Sampdoria records a 0-0 draw at Pisa. Pretty good!

They did not get three points, but that second zero in the final score is what makes a goalkeeper happy… Anyway, only 11 days later comes Pagliuca's first great victory. In Turin, goalkeeper raises to the sky his first career trophy when his Sampdoria wins the Italian Cup even after being defeated 2-1 (after extra time) by Torino. Not bad!

His Sampdoria it is, because Gianluca plays in both of the final matches and lives his part of these moments. And this is not an isolated episode. In the following 6 seasons in Genoa, Pagliuca gets used to the victory rituals, winning a trophy each year. There is only one dark patch in his time in Liguria, the season of 1992/93: that year, strange but true, Sampdoria wins nothing. Altogether, in eight years at Sampdoria, Pagliuca wins a bevy of 6 trophies - 3 Italian Cups, 1 Cupwinners Cup, 1 Italian Supercup and one historic championship (Sampdoria's first and, to this day, the only one) - and he also wins a spot on the national team (playing his first game on June 16, 1991: Italy-USSR 1-1).

After Pagliuca leaves Genoa to move to Inter (season of 1994/95), there remains another indelible memory, a sad one: the loss in the final of Champions Cup to Barcelona at Wembley Stadium.

It is May 20, 1992, and when Koeman's free kick in the 5th minute of the second half of extra time goes in, there are only tears.

The move to Inter would seem to open new possibilities of success. In reality, what follows is a string of Inter's least successful years in the history of the club: only one UEFA Cup and many disappointments. Top among those are the second place in the 1997/98 championship (Ronaldo's first season in Italy, finished amid rabid arguments stemming from the memorable Juve-Inter game of April 26, 1998, still frequently revisited), and the elimination from European competitions the following year, in play-offs against Bologna.

That year brought an end to Pagliuca's five-year term at Inter, and he finally returned home: it was in the summer of 1999 that he was officially presented at Casteldebole as Bologna's new goalkeeper.

Along the street that goes to the training center there appears a banner that requires no commentary: Welcome home!

The ambition is to give something significant to his beloved city, and maybe to catch up with other permanent fixtures of the championship - Pagliuca counts 421 appearances to date - to Ciro Ferrara's 427 and Paolo Maldini's 454. Perhaps he'll make it!