Ask people to write a list of the most expensive footballers in the history of the sport and names like Neymar, Kylian Mbappé and Alexander Isak will probably be mentioned. Even if you specified that the transfers had to be before the modern era, the footballers that would be spoken about are the likes of Diego Maradona, Jean-Pierre Papin and the Brazilian Ronaldo.
It is fair to say that the majority of people won’t have heard the name of Gianluigi Lentini, yet his record transfer fee stood for three years and his tale is a fascinating one.
Lentini’s Early Years
Gianluigi Lentini was born on the 27th of March 1969 in the Italian commune of Carmagnola, Turin. As a youth player, he was put into the youth system of his hometown club, Torino, making only occasional appearances for the senior team. In 1988, it was decided that he would spend a season on loan with Ancona in Serie B, where the winger scored four goals across 37 league appearances. It was enough to persuade Torino to give him a run in their own first team, where he scored six league goals on the way to helping them win the Serie B title.
That saw them promoted to the Italian top-flight, whilst the club’s new manager, Emiliano Mondonico, worked with the owner, Gian Mauro Borsano, to bring in Spanish player Rafael Martín Vázquez. The idea was for him to complement as well as other products of the academy in Luca Marchegiani and Giorgio Bresciani, leading to the club winning the Mitropa Cup in 1991 alongside finishing in fifth in Serie A. A year later and the ranks were bolstered further, resulting in Torino reaching the final of the UEFA Cup and coming third in the league.
The World Record Transfer
In the wake of Torino’s success, Lentini extended his contract with the club until 1995, with the eyes of the footballing world having sat up and taken notice when he was an integral part of the Italian club overcoming Real Madrid in the UEFA Cup semi-final. The problem was that Torino were having financial difficulties, meaning that the club was open to offers. One such offer came from rivals Juventus, but fan protests stopped that from going ahead, instead seeing AC Milan come in with an offer of 18.5 billion Italian lira, which was around £13 million.
@greatestsportsmoments2.0 So underrated😮💨🐐🇮🇹 #goat #italy #gianluigilentini #acmilan #properfootball ♬ Ravers Fantasy – Manian
That was a world record fee at the time, overtaking the first £10 million player in the form of Jean-Pierre Papin, who moved from Marseille to Milan, and the £12 million that Juventus paid for Gianluca Vialli. It was a fee that stood in the record books for three years, eventually being eclipsed by the £15 million that Newcastle United paid to prise Alan Shearer out of Blackburn Rovers. In his first season with his new club, he scored seven league goals under manager Fabio Capello, winning both the title and the 1992 Supercoppa Italiana, losing in the Champions League final to Marseille.
What Happened to Lentini’s Career
After playing for Milan in a pre-season tournament in Genoa, Lentini, who was a 24-year-old at the time, was travelling at 125 miles per hour in a canary-yellow-coloured Porsche 911 when he crashed on the A21 highway. He had been travelling from Genoa to Turin in order to spend time with his girlfriend, Rita Bonaccorso, who was the wife of Salvatore Schillaci, the Juventus striker, at the time. His womanising, as well as his long hair and love of holidays in Ibiza, had endeared him to the Torino supporters, who saw him as just a kid from the provinces.
The same wasn’t true now that he was an AC Milan player, where the ‘provincialismo’ didn’t fit the brand. The accident had been caused by a service station attendant fitting a slim tyre to the Porsche when one of the original tyres got a puncture, but the new tyre wasn’t supposed to go over 50 miles per hour. Lentini had been dragged from the wreckage moments before the car caught fire, with the player being put into an induced coma, having fractured his skull and suffered damage to one of his eye sockets.
In the following three seasons, he played only a handful of times and added just six goals to his tally. That didn’t stop him from marrying a beautiful Swedish model in his hometown, but virtually no one from his football career was invited. His form and fitness deteriorated, with the general feeling being that he liked playing football but that he never loved it. He rejoined his former coach, this time at Bergamo, and was called up to the Italian national side, having rediscovered his form, but that didn’t last and he saw out his career in the Italian lower leagues.