Beppe Savoldi was one of Italy’s great centre forwards of the 1970s. Top scorer in 1972-73, he has the record of placing himself 12 times in the top ten Serie A scorers. Despite this, he was hardly ever considered for the national team.
Giuseppe Savoldi was born on January 21 1947 in Gorlago near Bergamo. He started his football career with Atalanta debuting in Serie A on September 5 1965 in the home game against Fiorentina. He played for his hometown club for three years, all in Serie A, with 57 league appearances and 17 goals. In his last season he scored 12 goals, attracting the interest of the bigger teams.
In 1968 he signed for Bologna. He stayed for seven years, winning the Coppa Italia twice (1970 and 1974), the Anglo-Italian League Cup in 1970 beating Manchester City 3-2 on aggregate, was Serie A top scorer together with Gianni Rivera and Paolo Pulici in 1972-73, made 277 appearances with 126 goals. He was also the protagonist of a ghost goal at Ascoli in the 1974-75 season. He had scored but a ball boy kicked the ball out of the goal and the referee did not notice.
In 1975 he joined Napoli. It was the most expensive signing in Italian football up to that point, 2 billion lire between cash, Sergio Clerici and Rosario Rampanti who joined Bologna. He stayed for four years winning a Coppa Italia in 1976 and another Anglo-Italian League Cup beating Southampton 4-1 on aggregate. He made 165 appearances with 77 goals.
In 1979 he went back to Bologna and stayed a year but he was involved in the totonero scandal and was suspended for three years. After Italy won the world cup in Spain in 1982, the Federation cut two years from all the suspensions so he went back to playing this time for Atalanta in Serie B in 1982-83 where he made 17 appearances with one goal. At the end of the season he retired.
As previously mentioned, Savoldi never had a good relationship with the national team. Despite the fact that he was certainly one of the best forwards in Italy, he was always at the wrong club. At that time, it was important to keep on good terms with the stronger Serie A clubs so the Turin and Milanese teams had the lion share of the call-ups. As a consequence, he played just four games for Italy with one goal in the friendly against Greece on December 30 1975. He also won a gold medal at the Mediterranean Games in Tunis in 1967 with the Under-21s.
He then became a manager coaching lower tier sides such as Carrarese, Lecco, Leffe, Massese, Siena, Spezia and Telgate. His biggest result was in 1994-95 when he was called to substitute Roberto Bacchin at Saronno and took the club to promotion to Serie C1.
Beppe Savoldi, Mr. 2 Billion as he was called, was a great centre-forward, had a long career cut short, and was a very good goal scorer. The fact that he hardly played for Italy is a mystery.
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