Agostino Di Bartolomei
source: goal.com
Roma have boasted a long-list of inspirational captains over the years. Giuseppe Giannini, Carlo Ancelotti, Giacomo Losi, and one of this weekend's derby skippers, Francesco Totti, are just a few of the leaders rightfully regarded as club legends. In Nils Liedholm’s great team of the early 1980s, the captain and leader of the Giallorossi was the outstanding Agostino Di Bartolomei.
In 15 years at the club, Di Bartolomei played 308 games, scoring an impressive 66 goals and captaining the team 146 times. ‘Ago’, as he was known, helped form one of Europe’s most feared midfields, alongside Ancelotti, Bruno Conti, Toninho Cerezo and the incomparable Brazilian Roberto Falcao. He led the team to the Scudetto in 1983, their first in more than 40 years, and only the second in their history. He also won three Coppa Italia winner’s medals in 1980, 1981 and 1984 and narrowly missed out on lifting the European Cup when Roma lost on penalties to Liverpool in the final in 1984.
Like Giannini and Totti after him, Di Bartolomei had Roman blood bursting through his veins. Born and raised in one of the poor peripheral zones of the capital city, Ago was signed by Roma as a 14-year-old. After winning the youth championship, he made his senior debut at the age of just 18 against Giacinto Facchetti’s Inter on 22 March, 1973.
By the next season he had become a first-choice in the Roma midfield and with the exception of a season-long loan spell at Vicenza to ‘build up his bones’ in Serie B, Ago soon developed into an indispensable player for the Giallorossi. Di Bartolomei played the role of the regista, the central midfield ‘director’, a position made famous by Gianni Rivera and which required a skilful playmaker who would distribute passes to the wings and the forwards and dictate the tempo of the game.
By the 1980s this position was beginning to disappear as coaches tended to favour midfielders who could press and tackle back. Perhaps this explains why Di Bartolomei was never called up for the Italian national team as coach Enzo Bearzot seemed to prefer the steel and substance of Marco Tardelli and Gabriele Oriali over the flair and fantasy of Di Bartolomei. A crime of gargantuan proportions, it certainly helps qualify Di Bartolomei as the greatest Italian never to play for his country.
Tall, elegant and skilful, with fantastic vision and technical ability, Di Bartolomei fulfilled all the requirements of the regista. He would regularly hit pinpoint 60-yard cross-field passes to a team-mates feet and could spot a through-ball that most other players did not believe existed. In a similar way to Andrea Pirlo today, Di Bartolomei never appeared to do much running or tackling back and for this reason he was often tormented by the criticism that he was lazy and slow. However, like Pirlo, his brilliance was unquestionable. Roma’s Swedish boss Nils Liedholm said of him that “he never moved on the pitch without a reason. His passes were long, and perfect. He always ran with great elegance, with his head up.”
A creator of goals, Ago also boasted a superb scoring record for a midfielder, with a ratio of one goal in just over every four games. In the 1977-78 season he scored 10 (in a 16-team league), a tally most forwards would be proud of, whilst the season preceding that he chipped in with eight strikes. Even when in 1982 Di Bartolomei was moved into a more defensive position in front of the defence he continued to regularly find the back of the net, scoring seven league goals in the 1983 Scudetto-winning campaign.
source: goal.com
Roma have boasted a long-list of inspirational captains over the years. Giuseppe Giannini, Carlo Ancelotti, Giacomo Losi, and one of this weekend's derby skippers, Francesco Totti, are just a few of the leaders rightfully regarded as club legends. In Nils Liedholm’s great team of the early 1980s, the captain and leader of the Giallorossi was the outstanding Agostino Di Bartolomei.
In 15 years at the club, Di Bartolomei played 308 games, scoring an impressive 66 goals and captaining the team 146 times. ‘Ago’, as he was known, helped form one of Europe’s most feared midfields, alongside Ancelotti, Bruno Conti, Toninho Cerezo and the incomparable Brazilian Roberto Falcao. He led the team to the Scudetto in 1983, their first in more than 40 years, and only the second in their history. He also won three Coppa Italia winner’s medals in 1980, 1981 and 1984 and narrowly missed out on lifting the European Cup when Roma lost on penalties to Liverpool in the final in 1984.
Like Giannini and Totti after him, Di Bartolomei had Roman blood bursting through his veins. Born and raised in one of the poor peripheral zones of the capital city, Ago was signed by Roma as a 14-year-old. After winning the youth championship, he made his senior debut at the age of just 18 against Giacinto Facchetti’s Inter on 22 March, 1973.
By the next season he had become a first-choice in the Roma midfield and with the exception of a season-long loan spell at Vicenza to ‘build up his bones’ in Serie B, Ago soon developed into an indispensable player for the Giallorossi. Di Bartolomei played the role of the regista, the central midfield ‘director’, a position made famous by Gianni Rivera and which required a skilful playmaker who would distribute passes to the wings and the forwards and dictate the tempo of the game.
By the 1980s this position was beginning to disappear as coaches tended to favour midfielders who could press and tackle back. Perhaps this explains why Di Bartolomei was never called up for the Italian national team as coach Enzo Bearzot seemed to prefer the steel and substance of Marco Tardelli and Gabriele Oriali over the flair and fantasy of Di Bartolomei. A crime of gargantuan proportions, it certainly helps qualify Di Bartolomei as the greatest Italian never to play for his country.
Tall, elegant and skilful, with fantastic vision and technical ability, Di Bartolomei fulfilled all the requirements of the regista. He would regularly hit pinpoint 60-yard cross-field passes to a team-mates feet and could spot a through-ball that most other players did not believe existed. In a similar way to Andrea Pirlo today, Di Bartolomei never appeared to do much running or tackling back and for this reason he was often tormented by the criticism that he was lazy and slow. However, like Pirlo, his brilliance was unquestionable. Roma’s Swedish boss Nils Liedholm said of him that “he never moved on the pitch without a reason. His passes were long, and perfect. He always ran with great elegance, with his head up.”
A creator of goals, Ago also boasted a superb scoring record for a midfielder, with a ratio of one goal in just over every four games. In the 1977-78 season he scored 10 (in a 16-team league), a tally most forwards would be proud of, whilst the season preceding that he chipped in with eight strikes. Even when in 1982 Di Bartolomei was moved into a more defensive position in front of the defence he continued to regularly find the back of the net, scoring seven league goals in the 1983 Scudetto-winning campaign.
