Gigi Peronace

Luigi "Gigi" Peronace (; 29 November 1925 – 29 December 1980) was an Italian football agent from Calabria doing business predominantly between English and Italian clubs. He has been described as the "first real agent in England". Peronace spoke English, and when the British troops came to Calabria during the Second World War he organised football games with them. and then to his managerial successor, Jesse Carver.

In 1957, Leyton Orient manager Alec Stock was interested in moving to Italy. He was put in contact with Peronace, and they discussed the possibility of a move in a rendezvous in Green Park. Peronace convinced AS Roma that Stock was the manager they wanted and the move was completed. That year Peronace also negotiated the transfer of John Charles from Leeds United to Juventus for £65,000 and a £10,000 signing-on fee. and the transfers of two Scottish players to Torino – Joe Baker from Hibernian and Denis Law from Manchester City. He also aided friend Matt Busby in transferring Law back to England in 1962, this time to Manchester United.

In the 1960s, Peronace moved to England and lived a life of some style in a house in Twickenham, in which he erected a huge marble staircase. This became the Anglo-Italian Cup, which lasted in its original form for four seasons from 1970 to 1973, with Swindon Town – the victors of the 1968-69 Football League Cup and one of the instigators of the event – winning the inaugural competition in 1970. By the later 1970s it had become a semi-professional tournament, and following Peronace's death in 1980 it was renamed the Gigi Peronace Memorial. It was while Peronace was in Montevideo, preparing with the Italian team for the 1980 Mundialito, that he suffered a massive heart attack and died in Bearzot's arms in the team hotel on 29 December 1980.

Legacy Peronace left behind a wife and five children, who found themselves in debt due to Gigi's taste for high living and were subsequently rehoused in Latina by Alvaro Marchini, the millionaire former president of Roma. But he was also the first Italian football agent and football manager to achieve great success in Britain, before any other Italian, such as Fabio Capello, Carlo Ancelotti or Antonio Conte.