Gabriele Marcotti
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Gabriele Marcotti (born July 28, 1973 in Milan) is an Italian sports journalist and presenter who has earned notoriety for his passionate views and encyclopaedic knowledge of world football, especially the Premiership and Serie A.[citation needed]
Born in Italy and now based in London, he was raised in Chicago, Poland, Germany, New York and Japan. He is also fluent in Italian, English, German and Japanese. Marcotti obtained a bachelor's degree from the University of Pennsylvania and master's degree in journalism from Columbia University, New York.
Marcotti is known in the US for his work in Sports Illustrated, he also writes for Champions Magazine, The Times in England and The Sunday Herald in Scotland, having previously written for The Daily Mail and The Financial Times. In Italy he is a columnist for La Stampa and Il Corriere dello Sport.
After working for talkSPORT radio for six years, Marcotti switched to BBC Radio 5 Live, co-presenting the Friday edition of Five Live Sport alongside Mark Pougatch to preview the weekend’s fixtures in the Premier League and beyond. Here he is noted for his contrasting views to the other pundit Steve Claridge, often taking a more scientific and less 'emotionally clouded point of view and can often be seen as football Billy Beane.[1] He is often on Bravo and Setanta Sports' coverage of Serie A matches. He is sometimes interviewed on Sky Sports News and BBC's Football Focus, particularly when big stories break on Italian football such as the 2006 match-fixing scandal.
It is said that Marcotti himself supports Monza, though he admits that, as a boy, he was an Inter fan. He is also a Chelsea season ticket holder, although that does not correctly imply that he is fan of the club. Despite rumors indicating otherwise, Marcotti has never claimed that Diego Maradona is the greatest footballer to ever grace the game, even though he has written extensively about that subject.[2]
Marcotti has co-written two books: Paolo Di Canio's autobiography (1999) and The Italian Job (2006), written in conjunction with Gianluca Vialli. The Italian Job was nominated for the William Hill Sports Book of the Year.
He took over the job as host of The Times podcast TheGame in August 2007, along with Guillem Balague, replacing Danny Kelly. He had previously been a main contributor to the podcast for 2006-2007 season. Recently, both Marcotti and Guillem have started contributing blogs and analysis on Footbo.com (social networking site for football fans)[1]
He is married, and has one daughter.
