Antonio Valentín Angelillo

Antonio Angelillo

Omar Sívori (Juventus) and Antonio Angelillo (Internazionale)
Personal information
Full name Antonio Valentín Angelillo
Date of birth (1937-09-05) 5 September 1937
Place of birth Buenos Aires, Argentina
Height 178 cm (5 ft 10 in)
Playing position Inside forward
Youth career
1952–1955 Arsenal de Llavallol
Senior career*
Years Team Apps (Gls)
1955 Racing 9 (3)
1956–1957 Boca Juniors 34 (16)
1957–1961 Internazionale 113 (68)
1961–1965 Roma 106 (27)
1965–1966 A.C. Milan 11 (1)
1966–1967 Lecco 12 (1)
1967–1968 A.C. Milan 3 (1)
1968–1969 Genoa 22 (5)
National team
1955–1957 Argentina 11 (11)
1961–1962 Italy 2 (1)
Teams managed
1969–1971 Angelana
1971–1972 Montevarchi
1972–1973 Chieti
1973–1974 Campobasso
1974–1975 Rimini
1975–1977 Brescia
1977–1978 Reggina
1978–1979 Pescara
1980–1984 Arezzo
1985–1986 Palermo
1987 Mantova
1987–1988 Arezzo
1988–1990 FAR Rabat
1989–1990 Morocco
1991–1992 Torres
* Senior club appearances and goals counted for the domestic league only.

Antonio Valentín Angelillo (Italian pronunciation: [andʒeˈlillo]; born 5 September 1937) is an Italian Argentine former football forward who played the majority of his professional career in the Italian Serie A, and was a member of both the Argentine and the Italian national teams.

Club career

Born in Buenos Aires, Angelillo started playing professionally in Arsenal de Llavallol in 1952. In 1955 he played with Racing Club de Avellaneda and moved to Boca Juniors in 1956.

In 1957 Angelillo was signed by the Italian club Internazionale and, from 1957 to 1961, he played 127 games with the Nerazzurri, scoring 77 times. In Serie A, he appeared in 113 matches and scored 68 goals for Internazionale, also serving as the club's captain.

Upon their arrival in Italy, Angelillo and his countrymen Omar Sívori and Humberto Maschio acquired the nickname The Angels with Dirty Faces (an ironic reference to the then-celebrated Angels with Dirty Faces movie), on account of their typically South American colour and flair. They were also known as The Trio of Death because of their clinical finishing.[1]

Angelillo (centre) in action with Inter Milan at San Siro at the turn of the 1950s and 1960s.

In the 1958–59 Serie A season, Angelillo scored 33 goals in 33 matches, being the tournament's top scorer. His goal total was the highest since Gunnar Nordahl had scored 34 in the 1950–51 Serie A season, and no player scored as many goals in a single Serie A season until Gonzalo Higuaín finished the 2015–16 Serie A season with 36 goals; until then, the only player since Angelillo to break the 30 goal barrier had been Luca Toni, who scored 31 goals during the 2005–06 Serie A season.

Although Angelillo was Internazionale's highest goalscorer while he was playing there, he did not win any titles with the Nerazurri.

From 1961 to 1965, Angelillo played 106 games with A.S. Roma in Serie A, scoring 27 times, winning the 1960–61 Inter-Cities Fairs Cup, and the 1963–64 Coppa Italia with the club. He then spent one season at A.C. Milan, scoring one goal in 11 matches, winning the 1967–68 Serie A title with the club, although he did not appear in Milan's victorious 1967–68 European Cup Winners' Cup campaign that season. The following year, he signed with Lecco, playing 12 matches and scoring one goal, with the team being relegated to Serie B. He remained in Serie B, where his next and last team was Genoa.

International career

In official tournaments, Angelillo played 11 matches and scored 11 goals for the Argentina national team. During the 1957 South American Championship that Argentina won, Angelillo was tied for the second-most goals in the tournament, with eight in six matches, scoring in all matches but the last one against Peru[2] After that competition, he and other Argentine players (Omar Sivori and Humberto Maschio) were bought by different Italian teams. After moving to Italy and acquiring citizenship, he appeared twice for the Italian national team, scoring 1 goal.

Coaching career

After retiring from playing, he stayed living in Italy, where he became a coach, managing several lower division clubs. His most notable success came with Arezzo, which he led to win a Coppa Italia Serie C title, a Serie C1 title and narrowly missing a promotion to Serie A in its first attempt in Serie B. Angelillo now works as an Inter scout for South America, and still lives in Arezzo.

References

  1. ↑ Malta Today Archived 1 January 2010 at the Wayback Machine.
  2. ↑ Source: http://www.rsssf.com/tables/57safull.html
Wikimedia Commons has media related to Antonio Angelillo.
This article is issued from Wikipedia. The text is licensed under Creative Commons - Attribution - Sharealike. Additional terms may apply for the media files.