MILAN – "The only fear I remember having as a child was that I’d get a serious injury and compromise my future career."
Born in Milan in 1967, Paolo Mandelli was always convinced his life would inevitably end up in football. Towards the end of the 1970s, like many boys of his age, he’d spend day after day playing football in the local oratory. It was here in Milan that Inter scout Rino Confalonieri spotted him as an 11-year-old and brought him to the club’s attention.
Paolo spent nearly seven seasons at the Nerazzurri academy, where he found his best position as an attacking winger and consistently improved. Short of hair and fresh of face, Mandelli was stocky, pacey and blessed with enviable technique. His steady rise into Mariolino Corso’s Primavera side was a natural progression.
By the time the 1986 Viareggio Cup came around, however, Arcadio Venturi was in charge of Inter U19 as Corso had been called to replace Ilario Castagner at the first-team helm. The Primavera eased through to the semi-finals where they faced a Fiorentina line-up featuring Roberto Baggio. A cagey affair was decided by Mandelli himself in the 61st minute and the rising star would go on to share the leading goalscorer award at the tournament with Genoa’s Roberto Simonetta.
Two days later, Mandelli was part of the team that beat Gianluca Pagliuca’s Sampdoria in the final thanks to a penalty by Andrea Zanuttig, thus securing the club’s third triumph at the famous youth-team competition.
His starring role at the Viareggio Cup earned Mandelli a crack at the first team. His senior debut came on 16 March 1986 against Napoli at the Stadio San Paolo. For just over ten minutes, he stood shoulder-to-shoulder with the likes of Giuseppe Bergomi, Alessandro Altobelli and Diego Maradona.
The 1985/86 season changed Mandelli’s life drastically and the dreams of a young lad discovered at an oratory were beginning to come true. On 21 May 1986, he came off the bench in the return leg of a quarter-final Coppa Italia tie against Roma and produced a magnificent solo effort to score his first goal for Inter.
It proved to be his last too, since Mandelli was sent out on loan to Lazio that summer before being sold to Sambenedettese in 1987. From there, he’d move to Messina, Reggiana, Monza and Foggia, where he settled for four seasons. The first two, under the tutelage of the maverick Zdenek Zeman, were probably the best of his career. On 13 December 1992, he scored against Giovanni Trapattoni’s Juventus in a 2-1 win that sent the locals at the Stadio Pino Zaccheria into dream-land.
After five years at Modena towards the end of the 1990s, Mandelli moved to Sassuolo in the fourth tier, where he brought the curtain down on his playing days and embarked on a career as a coach. He has managed the Neroverdi under-19s since 2003, a spell interrupted for only three matches in 2010-11 when he accepted the role of caretaker manager to keep the first team from being relegated into the third flight. Sassuolo’s Serie B status secured, Mandelli returned to the youth academy and continued guiding it with the same humility and hard work that had marked him out as a youngster.
This season, he managed the biggest achievement of his coaching career when he guided the Emilian club to their first-ever title at the Viareggio Cup on 29 March, thus becoming one of the few people to have won it both as a player and as a coach. In doing so, Mandelli had to face his own past, overcoming Inter in the quarter-final on penalties, after having drawn with Bologna, with Gianluca Pagliuca as goalkeeping coach, in the group stages.
After the game, Mandelli and Pagliuca, opponents in the 1986 final, embraced each other and took a trip down memory lane. Thinking back to his magnificent adventure 31 years ago in the Nerazzurri shirt, Paolo couldn’t help but crack a smile.
Davide Zanelli
