June 27 – Zola’s Golden Chair | On This Football Day

June 27 – Zola’s Golden Chair

FOOTBALL is supposed to be a team game, but being human, we can’t help but single people out even within the team.

There always has to be a man of the match and even after a 20-pass move with 10 players that ended in a simple tap in for the striker, it is the goal scorer who gets the plaudits.

Then there are the individual awards. Player of the season, for club, league, country etc, and then the really big hitters like the Ballon d’Or or the Golden Boot at the World Cup.

Today in 1999 former Chelsea favourite Gianfranco Zola was celebrating when he was the recipient of the one of the daftest-named awards in football, nay the world.

The pocket-sized Italian was the proud winner of the prestigious Golden Chair award. No, that is not the Wycombe Wanderers player of the year award, but rather the gong handed out to the best Italian footballer playing abroad and so-called because it is sponsored by firms in the northeast of Italy who produce most of Europe’s chairs. How brilliantly random. Italy’s top overseas stars better hope the award sponsorship deal is never taken on by a toilet manufacturer or a purveyor of manure.

A panel of judges declared the top 10 as: 1 Gianfranco Zola (Chelsea), 2 Benito Carbone (Sheffield Wednesday), 3 Lorenzo Amoruso (Rangers), 4 Fabrizio Ravanelli (Marseille), 5 Gianluca Vialli (Chelsea), 6 Amedeo Carboni (Valencia), 7 Roberto Di Matteo (Chelsea), 8 Michele Serena (Atletico Madrid), 9 Gianluca Festa (Middlesbrough), 10 Marco Simone (Paris St Germain).

Zola arrived in England in 1996 from Parma and was an immediate hit with the Chelsea faithful, and even helped them win the FA Cup in his debut season, with a memorable goal against Liverpool as Chelsea came from 2-0 down to win 4-2.

In his seven years at Stamford Bridge Zola’s sublime skill and cartoon-sized smile won him the hearts of the supporters who, in 2003, voted him the best ever Chelsea player.

Sadly, we have not been able to find out whether Franco received an actual golden chair as part of his prize, or whether he has now installed said chair behind his desk in the managers office at Upton Park, but if he has (and we’d like to imagine that he has) perhaps he sits back in it and contemplates some of his best moments like these:

Of course now he his making a name for himself across the capital in East London as a bright managerial prospect, much as this man once was in Yorkshire. We’ll have more for you tomorrow sports fans, so check it out.