Pied piper of Serie A coverage returns on BBC

James Richardson's cafe football reviews became legendary

Some 24 years since Channel 4's pioneering coverage of Serie A ended, James Richardson remains inexorably linked to 'calcio' for British football fans.

Invariably sitting in a sun-drenched piazza in some impossibly exotic Italian city, Richardson would talk the viewers through the week's news in Italy's top flight with a cappuccino and a pink sports newspaper.

All delivered with an easy wit and sophistication that made the coverage feel less like a football championship and more like a stylish gap year.

Richardson returns to our screens on Monday evening at the Diego Maradona Stadium for Napoli against Bologna, which is live on BBC Alba from 19:35 BST.

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Gazzetta, which ran from 1992 to 2002, garnered a huge following at a time when televised live football was relatively scarce.

Sky had snapped up the rights to the newly formed Premier League in England and, while the Scottish Premier Division, as it was then called, was available free to air, Serie A offered something unmistakably different.

It wasn't just the kits (think Sampdoria, Fiorentina or AC Milan), it was the star players from across the globe, exorbitant transfer fees and enormous stadia, many of which remain architectural marvels.

Richardson was both presenter and cultural tour guide who brought it all to life. He describes it as "a magical era...when giants scored goals in Italy and was totally different to anything else on offer at the time. There wasn't the blanket coverage of football we see now".

Richardson explains he got the job with Channel 4 almost by accident.

Channel 4 acquired the rights to Serie A principally to follow the fortunes of Paul Gascoigne, who had joined Lazio from Tottenham Hotspur in 1992.

"I knew someone who worked at the company producing the coverage, happened to speak Italian and was cheap, so I got the job," Richardson explains.

"Paul was the catalyst for the whole thing, it just so happened to be the place where all of the world's best were playing.

"We had no money for a studio, but the producer, Neil Duncanson, was the person who came up with the idea of me reviewing the papers in a cafe.

"It started with a brilliant 3-3 between Sampdoria and Lazio and so began with a real blast. It was a fantastic period and one people still recall with a lot of affection."

The likes of Roberto Baggio and Zinedine Zidane made Serie A compelling viewing

Even during the core Gazzetta years, AC Milan and Juventus dominated the title race much in the same way the Old Firm have done in Scotland, but Richardson recalls the strength of Italian football at the time as adding to the general appeal.

"Between 1989 and 1998, nine of the 10 European Cup finals had an Italian side in them," he says. "Four were won. It was the kind of dominance not seen since."

It seemed that every club had a wealthy local "padrone" as Richardson calls them, each of whom had seemingly endless sums of lira to lavish on the world's best.

"They would curry favour in their city, demonstrating their largesse by spending large sums of money on players that they didn't always need," he explains.

Arguably that sums up what made Italian football so compelling.

"AC Milan and Arrigo Sacchi drove what made Italian clubs so successful in that era," Richardson suggests. "Sacchi's story is incredible. They were far and away the best club in the world at the time.