349: Ivano Bonetti, Tranmere Rovers, 1997 First Division Panini Official Sticker Collection

Once again we are blessed with the insights of Richard Allinson for today’s blog. Not only has he reached into an obscure sticker album for his subject but he has tapped into the excellent Venn diagram intersection of players who have represented both Crystal Palace and Grimsby Town. Let’s get niche.

Juventus, Sampdoria, Torino...Grimsby Town. 25 years on and Ivano Bonetti’s move to one of English football’s most unfashionable clubs still seems flat out bizarre. This was a man who had won two Serie A titles and appeared in a European Cup final against Barcelona at Wembley Stadium three years previously. This was a club who had won a few Lincolnshire Senior Cup titles and were more used to Barnsley than Barcelona. It made literally no sense but blimey it wasn’t half exciting.

Think that all sounds a bit odd so far? I haven’t even begun. Ivano actually paid £50,000 out of his own pocket to fund the transfer, the other half of the £100,000 asking price being raised by fans of the cash strapped Mariners. And they technically didn’t really sign him. More hired him from an American management company. See? Weird.

All this though led to an immediate bond between fans and player that can only be compared to the love a mother feels for her newborn baby. If you look at Ivano’s stats at Grimsby they weren’t spectacular, 2 goals in 19 games. But by heck he changed everything. There were rumours of his mate ‘a centre back from AC Milan’ joining. He never arrived. There were never ending chants of IVANO... BONETTI ringing around Blundell Park. There was the dismantling of West Brom, managed by Mariners legend Alan Buckley, and there was the 7-1 absolute spanking of Luton Town in the FA Cup third round in January 1996.

Luton Town. Ivano Bonetti. A chicken buffet. Following a 3-2 away defeat to the Hatters just a month after the FA Cup win, Grimsby Town’s then manager Brian Laws strangely decided to lob a plate of cooked poultry at our Italian hero which fractured his cheekbone. The truth as to why this happened has got lost in rumour over the years but safe to say the bubble was somewhat burst.

Spectacularly Brian Laws kept his job after this incident. And Ivano? Well he kept  on playing for the Mariners for the remainder of the season notching up another three games on his return from injury. Not surprisingly, considering their best player had been hospitalised by the manager, Grimsby’s form tailed off and they ended up in 17th place. Ivano left at the end of the season and had a couple of less eventful spells at Tranmere Rovers and Crystal Palace before returning to Italy.

Mariners' fans briefly got excited again a few years later when an “Italian Consortium” (not the Mafia) were rumoured to be buying the club with the intention of installing Ivano as manager. This didn’t happen but thankfully this wasn’t due to someone getting decked with a chicken leg in the negotiations.

Ivano was to return to British shores with Dundee FC in 2000. To précis this spell, he signed World Cup finalist Claudio Caniggia and ended up claiming back £800,000 he had lent the club to help fund a different transfer. All together now... IVANO... BONETTI.