Pierluigi Casiraghi

An Italian footballer and coach, Pierluigi Casiraghi made his debut as a professional at the age of 16 with A.C. Monza. His skills as a scorer attracted the interest of Juventus F.C., who bought him in the summer of 1989. Casiraghi played four seasons with them, contributing to two UEFA Cups titles and one Italian Cup. In 1993 he moved to Lazio scoring 41 goals in five seasons and winning the 1998 Italian Cup.

Casiraghi played 44 matches with the national team, scoring 13 goals, yet failed to score at the 1994 World Cup in which Italy finished second. Two years later at the 1996 European Championship, he got off to a great start, scoring two goals against Russia, but Italy was then eliminated from the tournament and Casiraghi, at the peak of his career, saw his dreams fade of winning a trophy in the Azzurra vest.In 1998, Casiraghi ventured into English football with Chelsea, but suffered a knee injury in November of that year, which ended his career at 30 years of age.

As a coach, Casiraghi initially worked with the Monza youth team, moving on to Legnano and again to Monza. In July 2006, he started coaching the Under-21 national team. In 2007, the team reached the final phase of the European Championship which was also the qualification for the 2008 Olympic Games in Beijing, but their quest ended in the quarter-final against Belgium (2-3).

Coaching at the 2009 European Championship in Sweden with the Under-21 team, the Azzurri were eliminated in the semi-finals losing 1-0 to Germany, the eventual winner of the tournament. Finally, due to the failure to qualify for the 2011 European Championships and the 2012 Olympics, Casiraghi left his Under-21 coaching duties on 20 October 2010.

On 24 December 2014, Casiraghi joined Cagliari as deputy for Gianfranco Zola, and trained the Sardinian team (replacing the exonerated Zdeněk Zeman). In 2015, following the removal of Zola, Casiraghi was fired with the rest of the coaching staff. In July 2015, Casiraghi took on the role of Zola’s deputy at Al-Arabi in Qatar. The former Chelsea striker followed Zola to Birmingham City but in April 2017 both men resigned.