My Favourite Chairman

Over recent weeks, that old wildcard Milan Mandaric has been popping up in the press quite a bit; reunited with jilted lover ‘dirty’ Arry, selling half the club to Abramovic’s ex-business partner’s housekeeper’s mate’s cousin-in-law’s drinking buddy (I think), and sending Rupert Lowe a dead duck for xmas. Blimey, we do have some real characters in the English game, eh? No. Introducing Luciano Gaucci.

Luciano Gaucci is my favourite chairman in football, and makes old Milan look like a thoroughly sensible bloke. Chairman of Italian side Perugia, Gaucci first hit the headlines in England after he hounded Ahn Jung-Hwan (the decent South Korean striker) out of the club having scored the golden goal to knock Italy out of World Cup 2002. Essentially Spurs did the same thing with Helder Postiga after he scored against us in Euro 2004, but with a little decorum. Like Ahn himself, decorum is clearly a little too foreign for Italian football, and certainly Gaucci, who commented that Ahn had “offended me and the whole Italian nation”. But like the Murphys, he’s not bitter.

In 2003, Gaucci almost pulled off the most hilarious triumvirate of signings since Wayne Rooney spelt his name right at the third attempt when joining Manyoo. Gaucci started off with a veritable Lockerbie bombing of a transfer, by signing the son of Libya’s cute and cuddly dictator Colonel Gaddafi. Italian football has a strange relationship with ex-Italian colony Libya, and even bizarrely hosted the Super Cup (their charity shield) in the Libyan capital Tripoli in 2002. Saadi Gaddafi never even got a game for Perugia, probably because he was shit, and ended up getting caught taking nandrolone.

Perugia then announced they were looking at a Swedish played called Ljungberg. First name Hannah. Yup, exploiting a loophole in the Italian regulations, Gaucci endeavoured to make Perugia the first team ever to sign a woman footballer to play in a male team. Gaucci reasoning was faultless, explaining that

“We are in 2003, men go to discothèques and go naked on the beach, I can’t see why players would have a problem having a woman on the team”

Clearly we can see that Gaucci is not only an astute chairman, he is also an intellectual. Amazingly, Ljungburg turned down the opportunity to join Gaucci’s haven of sexual equality.

Having been thwarted by his Swedish tit interest, Gaucci swooped to pull of the most astonishing transfer of all. Having been deemed surplus to requirements at newly relegated Coventry, Jay Bothroyd became a free agent. Realising the glorious opportunity Gaucci pipped a host of European giants (Grimsby, Cardiff, Dundee) to the post and signed up the marauding attacking genius, citing that Perugia needed “quality to progress in the Inter-Toto Cup”. Not only an intellectual, Gaucci is also a mean scout. Bothroyd is currently sitting on the bench at Charlton, suffering from blackouts, and recently crashed his car.

So, when my fellow West Ham fans are next chanting ‘Brown Out!’ in fevered unison (happens approx. every 3.4 years), I will be chanting ‘Gaucci In’. If that fails, I will settle for Mandaric. Turns out that George Best’s son Callum has Milan as his middle name, as the Pompey chairman was one of our favourite alcoholic lothario’s closest friends. Now that’s what I call a chairman.