Franco Baresi and Fulham: no match made in heaven
The Italian legend, who passed away last week, spent three inauspicious months in SW6 more than two decades ago.
It’s less than a fortnight since Kevin Keegan, a global footballing legend with links to Fulham, passed away. Now it’s Franco Baresi, the magisterial Italian defender who enjoyed a brief and largely unheralded spell with our club as Director of Football after his two-decade playing career ended. Yet it’s a third figure, Bobby Moore, that comes to mind when you think of him.
Both defenders wore number six and captained their country, both won a World Cup (Moore 1966, Baresi was in the Italy squad that won in 1982), and both have been endlessly compared in the press.
Moore at least spent several seasons in Fulham white, while Baresi, appointed by now-disgraced chairman Mohamed Al Fayed to add glamour to the club’s profile, lasted just 81 days in the summer of 2002. Curiously, neither Moore nor Baresi proved successful managers: maybe they couldn’t cope with coaching lesser talents. Not that it seems Baresi was allowed near the FFC squad.
Given the way Fayed’s relationship with then-manager Jean Tigana ended, it’s no surprise that the press depicted Baresi as a potential replacement. Yet the fact the Italian’s title was downgraded to the role of football adviser and his interaction was solely with the chairman suggests it was quickly felt the relationship wasn’t working.
The initial press release claimed that Baresi would “take on a range of duties including scouting, recruitment of players, the Academy and the development of women’s football.”
Goalkeeper Edwin Van Der Sar, once over-frank with criticisms of club policy in an interview with this writer (comments that were never published), was typically forthright: “There is no problem any more. Baresi has gone and it is Tigana now. Tigana has won the battle.” Tellingly, Edwin was on international duty when he spoke. And some may say he didn’t have happy memories of Italian football...
Perhaps Fulham thought Baresi’s presence would encourage major talents to sign for the club. But the only significant player who arrived was little-known Argentine striker Facundo Sava who, in a fashion reminiscent of a more recent manager, Tigana used very sparingly. JKA, anyone?
For Fayed, the idea was “for (Baresi) to repeat the role he had at Milan where he scouted worldwide for players.” He concluded that, while he’d created a position “to maximise Franco’s experience, sometimes experiments don’t work.” A six-month probation period had barely got half way.
Baresi declared himself “disappointed that the nature of my position with Fulham was not as I envisaged it when I was first approached.” This he had earlier described as “advisor to the Chairman and Board of Directors.” So logic dictates there must be another problem the wider world never heard about.
Having only represented one club as a player, his move shocked the football world. He told Italian newspaper La Gazzetta that he had been seduced by the loan of an apartment overlooking Hyde Park and confessed he’d packed more English language books than clothes. On his return to Milan, he worked with the under-20 youth team (Primavera) and was later given honorary director status.
The recruitment of Franco Baresi was supposed to help “make Fulham one of the foremost clubs in the world”, yet ended up a cliche in the same vein as “Man United of the South”. A rich man’s folly, EVDS would doubtless agree... Yet the lack of a Fulham reference in many obituaries of this world-class player is as nothing compared to his loss at the age of only 66. Our sympathies go to his club, his colleagues and his family.