Sand, Speedos and Costa Smeralda – How Calcio Used to Holiday

As pundits will never tire of pointing out, football has changed beyond recognition over the past three decades. Wages have sky-rocketed, restriction on the number of foreign players have long been ditched and you can watch the Milan derby as easily as taking in a fixture at your local club thanks to TV deals.

Away goals and replays have gone, as have baggy shirts, tickets on the gate, quagmire-style pitches and advertising boards carrying the logos of alcoholic drinks and tobacco companies.

Everything feels more polished and, well, sterile about the beautiful game these days, including the way footballers choose to spend their holidays.

Log on any social media network over the summer and you’ll be greeted by a deluge of carefully curated pictures of footballers spending time with their loved ones in Ibiza, Formentera, Dubai, Florida or the Maldives.

The posts all follow the same structure. The pictures are taken in plush resorts that are largely off-limits to the general public, and all feature footballers on their best behaviour – either training or tucking into healthy dishes.

But long before the advent of social media, holidays were very different. For a start, the only pictures of footballers spending time away from the pitch were snapped by paparazzi – more intrusive but also less staged.

The outfits have certainly changed, largely for the better it has to be said.

Cast your mind to the that picture of Graeme Souness and Trevor Francis on a boat in Portofino in 1984 wearing nothing but speedos, the same attire sported by AC Milan’s triumvirate of Ruud Gullit, Marco van Basten and Frank Rijkaard a few years later.

The destinations were also more varied.

During his Inter Milan days Jurgen Klinsmann could be spotted on Lake Garda, a favourite with German tourists, while former Torino and Roma striker Francesco Graziani, a World Cup winner in 1982, would holiday in Castiglione della Pescaia, a coastal town in Tuscany close to Grosseto.

If those sound like unassuming destinations, the late Juventus great Gaetano Scirea used to spend his summer holidays in the Ligurian coastal resort of Ceriale in a two-bedroom apartment.

Legend has it he once even apologised to the family on the sunloungers next to him on the beach after a stream of autograph hunters had headed over.

Located about 50 miles southwest of Genoa, Ceriale hasn’t changed much since the days of Scirea and remains a favourite getaway for families in Liguria and Piedmont.

Not everybody, of course, would choose low-profile destinations. During his Napoli days, Diego Maradona was fond of spending his holidays on the islands of Capri and Ischia, while Gianfranco Zola and former Inter Milan star Gianfranco Matteoli regularly went back to their native Sardinia.

The late Silvio Berlusconi was also a regular on the island, where he owned Villa Certosa on the Costa Smeralda, the Emerald Coast. Here, the pristine beaches and crystal clear waters are reachable by flying into Olbia Airport, which is well connected with the UK during the summer.

The 170-acre estate featured 25 bedrooms, five swimming pools, a golf course and a 300-seater faux ancient Greek amphitheatre along with a fake volcano.

It was here the former Italian prime minister welcomed Vladimir Putin in 2003 and Tony Blair and his wife Cherie a year later, when he spent £50,000 on a fireworks display to welcome the then-British prime minister.

Adriano Galliani, Berlusconi’s right-hand man and AC Milan’s former CEO, was a regular visitor too as he and the late media mogul thrashed out plans for the Rossoneri.

And it was at Villa Certosa that Berlusconi agreed to sell 48% of his shares in the club to Bee Taechaubol for €485m in the summer of 2015, only for the deal to collapse a year later when the Thai businessman failed to secure enough funds.

The likes of Christian Vieri and Francesco Totti were also regulars on the Costa Smeralda, in particularly in the town of Porto Cervo, where Alpine Formula 1 team principal Flavio Briatore used to own the Billionaire nightclub.

More recently, the likes of Alvaro Morata and David Beckham were spotted in Sardinia in the summer of 2024.

Elsewhere, the Tuscan town of Forte dei Marmi has been a favourite haunt for footballers for decades. Back in the 1970s tennis greats Adriano Panatta and Paolo Bertolucci would play Inter Milan legends Roberto Boninsegna and Giacinto Facchetti, while Marcello Lippi is a regular visitor.

Born in Viareggio, less than 10 miles from Forte dei Marmi, the former Juventus and Italy manager can often be spotted at the Bagno Piero beach and sat down for a drink with then-newly appointed Azzurri coach Cesare Prandelli at the Twiga Beach Club back in 2010.

Andrea Pirlo and Paolo Maldini are also regulars in the coastal town, while their former Milan team-mate Alexandre Pato was unveiled by Galliani as the Rossoneri’s latest signing at the Levante Nel Forte beach club in the central Viale della Repubblica.

Liverpool forward Federico Chiesa has a house in Forte dei Marmi, while 2006 World Cup winner Alberto Gilardino, Sassuolo striker Domenico Berardi and Roma duo Gianluca Mancini and Lorenzo Pellegrini are visitors in the summer.

Slightly more off the beaten track, the town of Fasano in Puglia is a favourite destination for several former Serie A stars, with Roberto Mancini, Alessandro Del Piero and Andriy Shevchenko sharing the same resort back in 2021.

Even when on holiday, you’re never too far from your calcio fix in Italy.