Fulvio Collovati: when a defender uses his head

MILAN – Stadio Giuseppe Meazza, 6 November 1983: It's the 5th minute of the Milan derby when Hansi Muller swings in a free kick from the right. Fulvio Collovati gets on the end of it and beats Ottorini Piotti with a stooping header– possibly via a deflection off Aldo Serena – to give Inter the lead.

Muller added a second goal as the Nerazzurri went on to win 2-0. It proved to be the catalyst for the side coached by Luigi Radice, who were struggling in the league at the time, as they began climbing the table, eventually finishing fourth to claim a UEFA Cup spot.

It was a key moment in Inter's season and indeed in Collovati's career as he scored a decisive goal against the club where he had grown up. The coach who brought him to AC Milan as a 13-year-old was a certain Giovanni Trapattoni, a man who would go on to write Nerazzurri history himself a few years later.

'Trap' spotted Fulvio, who was born in Friuli but moved to Milan at a young age, at Cusano Milanino, which incidentally was the club where Gabriele Oriali started out. Collovati remained at the Rossoneri – first in the academy and then in the first team – until 1982.

That summer, while at Italy's training camp before the World Cup in Spain, Collovati received a phone call from Sandro Mazzola, a Nerazzurri director at the time. Mazzola suggested he switch to the black-and-blue side of the city and Collovati accepted because – as he later admitted – he was worried about losing his place in the Italy team following AC Milan's relegation to Serie B. To get him, Inter offered Giancarlo Pasinato, Nazzareno Canuti and a young Aldo Serena in exchange.

For Fulvio, a strapping centre-back who read the game well and was an able man-marker, it was the start of what he described as “four marvellous years, both at the club and with the fans”. He said: “I have fantastic memories of my time at Inter because the supporters gave me such a wonderful welcome right from the off.”

From 1982 to 1986 Collovati was part of a squad including the likes of Walter Zenga, Giuseppe Bergomi, Evaristo Beccalossi and, from 1984, Karl-Heinz Rummenigge (“the one I preferred not to mark in training”) that finished third in Serie A on two occasions and were knocked out of the UEFA Cup by Real Madrid at the semi-final stage twice.

The defender with a penchant for going up for set pieces scored two goals in Inter's 1983/84 European campaign. The first was a header in the first-round second leg against Turkish side Trabzonspor, played in Cesena, which saw the Nerazzurri complete a comeback from 1-0 down in the first leg to a 2-1 aggregate victory. The second was poked home through a crowd in another second-leg turnaround, this time against Groningnen: 5-1 in Italy after a 2-0 defeat in the Netherlands.

That goal against the Dutch outfit came just three days before his derby strike and 12 months before another goal that has lived long in the memory of fans: Inter's third in a 4-0 drubbing of Giovanni Trapattoni's Juventus on 11 November 1984. Another header, from another set piece.

In the summer of 1986, after close to 170 appearances for the club, the 29-year-old Collovati moved back to his roots and joined Udinese. He would only spend one season there though, as it proved to be a difficult year: the Friulian side were relegated having been unable to overcome a nine-point penalty handicap.

He then moved to Roma before experiencing a second youth at Genoa between 1989 and 1993, establishing himself as a firm fan favourite. Which is exactly what he did a decade earlier, with his derby strike that sent the Nerazzurri faithful into raptures.

Roberto Brambilla