La Famiglia Inzaghi

By: Penny | July 20th, 2008

So, pre season has started, with Inzaghi at Milanello, apparently scoring hat tricks. Little Inzaghi has been less fortunate, but more about his problems later. I thought it might be helpful to write a little background information on the brothers, just to put them in perspective, sweet little bourgeois boys that they are.

As Gianluca Vialli points out in his book The Italian Job, the social makeup of Italian football is a lot different to that of the Premiership. Most British players are working class, whereas Serie A is decidedly middle class with the odd aristocrat, like Vialli himself, or millionaire’s son, like Andrea Pirlo. The Inzaghis’ background conforms to type, they both have accountancy certificates, just in case the football doesn’t last.

Unlike Vieri or Maldini they aren’t the sons of a footballer, their father Giancarlo was a ‘merchant’ and their mother Marina, looked after the family. Filippo was born when she was just 22, in Piacenza in Emilia-Romagna on 9 August, 1973, followed by Simone on 5 April, 1976. The Inzaghis actually lived in a village, San Niccolo, a few miles outside Piacenza.

There are lots of pictures of Filippo and Simone in their childhood, on holiday, at the swimming pool, skiing, they seemed to have had a pleasant time of it. In a little book about Filippo, written in his Juventus days, he says that he and Simone played constantly, outside, in the house, wherever they went, it reminds me of the stories of Cruyff, playing on the streets of Amsterdam with a tennis ball, for hours.

It’s easy to pick Filippo out in a film that exists of his school side playing, when he’s probably about nine. He looks tiny next to the other boys, but there he is, having a scratch, scoring a fabulous headed goal, and then falling over, who else could it be?

Filippo isn’t married and doesn’t have children, or at least if he is and he does then he isn’t telling the world about it. Simone has a son, Tomasso, with his ex-girlfriend, the actress Alessia Marcuzzi. If he has his father’s build and technique and his uncle’s instincts he’s likely to be a pretty formidable football player.

I’ve never seen it done in England, but the Italian press like to interview the family members of Serie A players. Mr and Mrs Inzaghi have featured in the gazetta, with Mrs Inzaghi letting slip that when Juventus played Piacenza she wanted Simone’s side, Piacenza to win. She wants to see them set up a football school together when they retire, which would be an interesting proposition, but the way Filippo is going, it may be a little while before Mrs Inzaghi realizes her dream.