Mark Fish is a South African former footballer who spent a season with Lazio in the mid 1990s.

It was a time when Serie A was the centre of the footballing world and here, for My Italian Job, Mark reflects on those days – and nights – in the Italian capital.

The 51-year-old, who also represented Orlando Pirates, Bolton and Charlton and won 62 caps for his country, tells Destination Calcio about rubbing shoulders with his heroes, adapting to a new country and what made him fall in love with Italy.

I ended up in Italy… a few months after the 1996 African Cup of Nations.

There’s a story that people always talk about, that I turned down Manchester United, but I didn’t. The African Cup of Nations was in South Africa and we won it. I was very fortunate to have done well in the tournament and have a lot of eyes on me.

The people representing me said they were going to take me to see Man United and Lazio. We went to watch United play against Everton, I met with Alex Ferguson after the game and he said he would like me to stay to see if I adapted to the surroundings. 

But we were under obligation to go to Italy as well. I was 21 years old, on top of the world. Even though I grew up as a Man United fan – in South Africa we only got the FA Cup and generally it was United or Liverpool on TV – it was fine. 

I was an AC Milan fan too and a fan of the three Dutchmen (Marco van Basten, Ruud Gullit and Frank Rijkaard) who played for them, and Franco Baresi.

So, I found myself in Italy signing for Lazio. The Italian league was the best in the world in the 1990s and as a defender that’s where you wanted to go. So I never said no to United.

It was a no-brainer to go from being semi-professional in South Africa to the best league in the world, playing against and with some of the best players, and learning. It was a good move.

My first impressions was… Just being in awe.

Just realising I’m in Italy, in Rome. It was – probably without me realising it at the time – a dream come true. That same year, before going to Lazio, I was selected for a World XI against the Brazilian team in New York and I met some of my heroes, Jurgen Klinsmann, Lothar Matthaus, Abedi Pele, George Weah, Marcel Desailly. Actually, it was Marcel who told me to be careful of women in Italy!

To help me adapt, my agents had one of my friends, Paul, fly with me and stay with me so that he would drive me to training. His dad was one of the people that got me into professional football.

It’s a new culture, a different language, but the nice thing about football is that you don’t really need to speak. You play football and on the field this is what you do. But obviously the club realised and tried to assist me. They got a tutor for me. The tutor I had was very helpful.

They gave me a beautiful woman to teach me Italian. I went to the team manager and said, ‘Sir, I’m not learning any Italian. This is a problem. The lady is too pretty.”

My favourite moment on the pitch was… I had the opportunity to change shirts with George Weah – the only African to win the Ballon d’Or. And playing Juventus at home, we lost 2-0 but the newspaper called me the ‘Lion from Africa’ because I didn’t give up.

But I want to talk about my team-mates. People don’t always understand, another challenge is coming to a new place and you’re there to take someone’s position, someone’s friend’s position. It might not be a pleasant or welcoming atmosphere – but this was.

He had to retire early but Pierluigi Casiraghi, who went on to play at Chelsea, he was just a fabulous footballer. Obviously Beppe Signori. Alessandro Nesta, I played next to him. Jose Chamot, the Argentinian, that’s just naming a few. I was young and fortunate. It was a fabulous time for me to be playing in Serie A, experiencing everything I could. The Rome derby… I played home and away. There’s no love lost there. It didn’t matter what the surface was like, we all wore six studs and we were going all in. Serie A was a fabulous place to be.

And as a young man, living in Rome as a bachelor in the mid 90s… there’s a lot of mischief you can get up to.

On my days off… I tried to experience as much as I could with my mate Paul.

We’re living in a world where, to go to our favorite restaurant, you’re driving past the Colosseum or the Pantheon. It’s surreal. I was a South African living the dream playing football, but I was still a proper South African.

My team-mates thought I was a bit nutty because we would go to the nightclub and me and Paul would be having a beer, enjoying ourselves on the dancefloor. My team-mates were drinking soft drinks, shaking their head thinking, ‘we’ve got another [Paul] Gascoigne on the team’.

Bar del Fico was nice because it was a quiet place, it was small so the waitresses we just spoke to them, I don’t think they even knew that I was a footballer and they spoke a bit of English. We liked going there.

What I loved most about Italy was… the fans.

They are unique and it was nice to be around people who understand football. When I say understand, you can be around people or football fans that think they know football but they don’t really know football. I think I was appreciated.

My fondest memory off the pitch was… at Fiorentina.

When I was leaving Lazio there was interest from Bolton but I also had the chance to go to Fiorentina for pre-season. One day we finished training and I was in my room with my room-mate, we get a knock on the door and told there’s a gentleman waiting for you downstairs.

We went down and there was [Swedish player] Kennet Andersson, a Russian midfielder and the great Roberto Baggio. He was the one that called us down to have a whisky and a cigar with him and just chat. He spoke broken English, but it was ‘wow’. He certainly was up there as a player, but as a person as well. I hold him in such high regard.

You are lively when you speak to him. You don’t want to be overly excited, like a groupie. Keep your composure. So my Italian experience, yeah, I had a whisky and a cigar with Baggio. It was a nice ending to my Italian experience because I finished a day or two after then I drove back to Rome and went on to sign for Bolton.

I left when… we got a new head coach.

I had been called up to an African XI to play against a European XI. We went to Lisbon and Lazio fired [manager] Zdenek Zeman and Dino Zoff took over. He changed the team and they went on a good run.

I played one or two games or came on as a sub and so it was very difficult for me to break back in. There were changes coming. Sven Goran Eriksson was coming from Sampdoria and he was bringing his players.

These days I’m…  involved with COSAFA and doing charity boxing fights.

I’m working with the confederations of 14 countries in southern Africa. I do technical study work for them. I’ve created a shortened version of football for U15 boys and girls to develop them the way they should be playing and protecting individual skills.

The game is changing a lot and not always for the better. I do some technical study work for CAF (Confederation of African Football) as well at big tournaments. So, I’m involved in football development and I do as much as I possibly can.

Life is quietening down a bit and becoming bit more peaceful. Family time is important but football is still there. We are keen on developing the game in a way that we can make the gap smaller between the African continent and the rest of the world. Our national team is now doing well again and we need to inspire the kids to continue to play football. So I’m involved in football and many things happening in our beautiful country.

I had a charity boxing event as well. That was exciting because it’s a different type of training. There was a South African boxer called Francois Botha, his nickname was the White Buffalo. He fought Mike Tyson and Lennox Lewis. His son was training me.

It’s all good fun but also a good learning curve for me. I try to keep myself active doing as many different things as I can. I was training for triathlons as well. When I was at my old club in the UK, one of my trainers that was helping me when I got injured, he was a trainer of Lennox Lewis. He was our physical trainer at Charlton. And I started doing kickboxing then. I’ve always enjoyed that.

I haven’t been back in Italy for a while. My son got selected for a rugby tour and that might be in Italy in December so let’s see. I like seeing Italian football coming back.