Antonio Valentín Angelillo

Antonio Valentín Angelillo (; 5 September 1937 – 5 January 2018) was an Italian Argentine football forward who played the majority of his professional career in the Italian Serie A; he was a member of both the Argentine and the Italy national teams.

Club career

Born in Buenos Aires, Angelillo started playing professionally in Arsenal de Llavallol in 1952. In 1955 he played with Racing Club de Avellaneda and moved to Boca Juniors in 1956.

Angelillo was part of the Argentina national team that won the 1957 South American Championship. That team, and its forward line in particular, was nicknamed The Angels with Dirty Faces (a reference to the then-celebrated Angels with Dirty Faces movie) due to both their irreverent style of play as well as to their less than rigorous attitude to training. The nickname followed Angelillo when he, along with fellow national team forwards Omar Sívori and Humberto Maschio, moved from Argentina to play football in Italy after the tournament. There, the trio was also known as The Trio of Death due to their clinical ability in scoring goals.

In 1957 Angelillo was signed by the Italian club Internazionale by the club's president at the time, Angelo Moratti; he made his Serie A debut with the club on 8 September 1957, in a 0–0 home draw against Torino, and scored 16 goals in his first season. From 1957 to 1961, he played 127 games with the Nerazzurri, scoring 77 times. In Serie A, he appeared in 113 matches and scored 68 goals for Internazionale, also serving as the club's captain.

During the 1958–59 Serie A season, Angelillo scored 33 goals in 33 matches, finishing the season as the tournament's top scorer. His goal total was the highest since Gunnar Nordahl had scored 34 in the 1950–51 Serie A season, and is still the record for most goals in a single 18-team Italian division season;

Although Angelillo was Internazionale's highest goalscorer while he was playing there, he did not win any titles with the Nerazzurri. When the club appointed Helenio Herrera as the team's new manager, Angelillo's independent nature, rebellious character, and hedonistic lifestyle off the pitch led to several disagreements between the two; as a result, Angelillo was sold to Roma during the 1961–62 season, for 270 million lire, in spite of offers in Argentina from his former club, Boca Juniors. After the tournament, he and two other Argentine players (Omar Sívori and Humberto Maschio) were bought by different Italian club teams, and, as a result, the trio were banned from playing for the Argentina national team by the Argentine Football Federation, and missed out on the 1958 World Cup in Sweden; Argentina were eliminated in the first round of the competition.

After moving to Italy and acquiring Italian citizenship through his grandfather, Angelillo later appeared for the Italy national team, making his debut in a 2–1 away defeat to Austria on 10 December 1960, although, in spite of the presence of several foreign-born Italian players – including his compatriots and former teammates Sívori and Maschio –, he was left out of the Italian squad for the World Cup in Chile two years later; in total he made two appearances for Italy between 1960 and 1962, scoring 1 goal, which came in his second and final appearance – a 6–0 home victory over Israel, held in Turin, on 4 November 1961.

Coaching career After retiring, Angelillo remained in Italy, where he became a coach, managing several lower division clubs. His most notable success came with Arezzo, which he led to win a Coppa Italia Serie C title, a Serie C1 title, and narrowly also missed out on a promotion to Serie A on his first attempt after being promoted to Serie B. Following his managerial career, Angelillo later worked as a scout with his former club Inter in South America, and reportedly discovered Javier Zanetti, who would later go on to captain the club and become Inter's record appearance holder; he later continued to live in Arezzo. His last club was Provincial Osorno in the 1994 Primera División of Chile.

Personal life Angelillo was married to Bianca, and had two children. Prior to his marriage, while playing for Inter during the 1960–61 season, he had a much publicised affair with the dancer Attilia Tironi – whose stage name was Ilya Lopez – whom he had met in a nightclub. His father was a butcher.

Honours Player Roma

Manager Angelana Prima Categoria: 1970–71

Arezzo Coppa Italia Serie C: 1980–81 Serie C1: 1981–82 (Girone B)

AS FAR Moroccan League: 1988–89