As the summer transfer window continues to bring new faces to Italy, Marco Jackson takes a look at one high profile signing from 1983 that spectacularly failed to hit the mark.
Fittingly for a club who wear the flag of St George on their shirt, AC Milan are more likely than most Serie A clubs to turn to English players as they look to import talent.
However, the reluctance of such players to travel to the peninsula means that even their record books list only a handful of Englishmen to make the trip, and fewer still to do so successfully.
Most recently, David Beckham wore the Rossoneri shirt with aplomb before having his second stint cut short by a ruptured achilles, while Jimmy Greaves’ spell also ended abruptly (though impressively in statistical terms). Ray Wilkins and Mark Hateley were part of poor Milan sides but were not noticeably worse than their colleagues.
Luther Blissett, on the other hand, remains a figure of fun to this day.
After a single season, and just five goals for Milan, Blissett returned from whence he came with his Italian dream resembling something of a nightmare.
The Milan side of 1983 had just been promoted from Serie B and while their name carried gravitas, the team was unspectacular.
Even so, the England striker made a promising start; he scored a hat-trick in an 8-1 friendly win against Arcidosso then added another in a 10-1 triumph over Follonica before another hat-trick at Ravenna and a goal at Modena.
Eight goals in six pre-season games wasn’t a bad return for Blissett, who went into the season high on confidence. A humbling 4-0 defeat to Avellino in the first game of the season was no way to start his Serie A campaign, but both Blissett and fellow new boy Eric Gerets both scored in the second game, a 4-2 win against Hellas Verona.
After standing by and seeing his team-mates score thrice, Blissett finally got his chance in the 79th minute after Claudio Garella spilled a shot into his path, allowing him to drill home from the penalty spot.
That was on September 20. Blissett was to score just once more before the end of the calendar year, a towering header to put Milan 2-0 up against Lazio in October.
In retrospect, it is no surprise the former Watford man struggled. Having been plucked from Graham Taylor’s side, he was famed for his speed and his ability to run behind defences. Even if he may have flourished in that role in Italy, he found that neither Ilario Castagner or Italo Galbiati followed such a Reepian philosophy.
It is unclear why Milan chose to spend such a high fee on a target man to play in a possession based system that required a striker with more guile and technical nous than the explosive pace of Blissett, but it was clear by January, with just two goals in 14 games, that it wasn’t working out.
To the striker’s credit, he improved a little in the second half of the season bagging a couple of winners as Milan survived on their return to Serie A.
Graham Taylor had used Blissett’s physical stature and strength to great effect as he scored 31 goals for Watford the season previous, and there was a definite look of the Hornets to his next goal, as he careered through a defender to bundle a headed cross over the goal-line in a 3-3 draw with Udinese.
It is, perhaps, worth noting, the quality of import that Italy had at that time. Across the field that day, Zico scored twice for the Zebrette, the second a delightful overhead kick. Against such skilful players, Blissett was always likely to come up second best and the diminutive Brazilian made better players than he look second best.
Still the season went on, and still Blissett kept on looking for goals, and seeking to prove himself after a move that Taylor had claimed to the Watford Observer would set him up for life. His fourth goal, which arrived as late as April, was a tap-in against Torino which came in a move that he had started himself.
A week later, he scored his last goal for the Rossoneri, a prodded winner against Pisa.
When he moved back to Watford, just a year into the three year contract he had signed the summer previously, it was for half the fee they had received. He was able to rekindle the old magic at Vicarage Road, clearly not effected by his Italian struggles, and scored 21 goals in his first season back.
Milan, meanwhile, showed they were undeterred from the issues that signing a rangy, English target man had caused, purchasing Portsmouth’s Mark Hateley that same summer.
Luther Blissett has gone into Milan folklore as one of the worst strikers to play for the club; his name and reputation far transcending the one disappointing season he spent with an under-whelming Rossoneri.
The numbers speak for themselves, but Blissett did not become a bad footballer overnight. He was simply in the wrong place at the wrong time.
