One of the top sport directors in the history of Italian football, Oreste Cinquini has spoken exclusively to Tribal Football and told some anecdotes, shared memories of the football of what we grew up with and opinions on today's game.
We are talking about a director and coach who worked with great teams such as Fiorentina and Lazio, a club where he also won an Italian Cup (and this gives us an idea of the quality of his work), but also for Russia, alongside Fabio Capello.
Among the greatest purchases of Cinquini (it would suffice to mention the discovery of a young Leonardo Bonucci in recent years) we can name Rui Costa, one of the strongest players ever, star of Fiorentina and Portugal.
Cinquini told us about the Fiorentina he was able to build: "I would say that I made many important purchases, but maybe the most important in Florence was Rui Costa, but I don't want to forget Toldo, Schwarz, we built a Fiorentina that went to the final four."
Not just big purchases and deals done, though. During a long career at such a high level, great regrets cannot be forgotten and in the case of Cinquini it is Lilian Thuram, key player of the historical Parma who won a UEFA Cup, two Scudetti with Juventus and the World Cup with France.
Cinquini revealed he narrowly missed a blow that would have changed Fiorentina's history, when Thuram was a young defender at Monaco.
He said: "I saw a formidable player in that Final Four, a guy named Liliam Thuram, whom we tried to buy a few weeks later. We went to Montecarlo, to President Camporà, with Oscar Damiani.
"After days and nights of negotiations we found an agreement, in the middle of the night I insisted that we should sign the deal with the boy and between the clubs, but the CEO and the president told me to wait, that it was late and there would have been a plenty of time in the next days."
Fiorentina's board should have listened to him, as Cinquini told us: "A few days later, we met with Thuram and his agent and we got his signature, so we returned to Camporà, but the didn't want to sell to us the player anymore. We took Padalino instead of Thuram, who went to Parma the following year. We had a deal for 6 million, Parma bought him for 10."
It should be a big regret for Fiorentina's chairman too, considering the career Thuram had. And Cinquini still thinks about that failed operation: "It would have been an exceptional blow. With Thuram we would have had an even stronger team."
It wasn't all bad though, as Cinquini managed to build a Fiorentina who won an Italian Cup and an Italian Supercup, creating the conditions to win the last trophy the Florence club lifted in 2001.
