Football’s best players are generally those who sustain a high level throughout their careers. However, it is true that those lights that burn twice as bright last only half as long
Occasionally, a hitherto unheralded player explodes into a period of such sustained wonder that you can’t help but start willing them on, sharing in their joy and wondering how long it will all last.
Toto Schillaci had one; the golden summer of 1990, but could never reach those heights before or after. Football is littered with one season wonders; players whose names end up in the history books, but their stories never make it.
This is the story of one such time. In the mid-1990s, in unfashionable Bari, we were treated to one of the most glorious flowerings of all.
The Season of Protti.
Looking back to the start of 1995-96 season, it’s fair to say that in Bari’s previous three seasons, Igor Protti’s total of 22 goals offered no indication of what was to follow.
Protti started at his home town club of Rimini in the early 1980s before moving on to Livorno in 1985. After failing to set the world alight, he moved to Virescit Boccaleone in Bergamo in 1988. He scored ten goals in his season there, earning a move to Messina the following summer.
It looked as if Protti was becoming a journeyman pro, though his three seasons with Messina were more successful, scoring 31 goals before moving to Bari in the summer of 1992. That was where this story really takes off.
Protti was his own man; he looked unkempt and unlikely, with flowing locks and ragged facial hair. He hadn’t played higher than Serie B before Bari were promoted in 1995, and had never scored more than 12 goals in a season.
The Rimini-born hitman had a blunderbuss of a shot, however, and could rifle shots in from anywhere; hard, low and generally into the corners. He was also a powerful header of a ball, as if his skull were hewn from stone.
It all came together wonderfully in the Autumn of 1995.
It started with a flash, three minutes into the season, as Protti smashed home the first goal of the Serie A season to give Bari the lead against Napoli. In a story that became familiar throughout the season, Protti’s good work was undone at the other end with Bari conceding late on to end up drawing 1-1.
He carried his form through the early season, grabbing a hat-trick in a 3-3 draw with Lazio –balls flying into the net as if from a cannon. By the time he brought Bari back to 3-1 down in the last minute at Piacenza in Week 4, Protti had scored all six of his team’s goals.
When Protti next found the target, in a 3-0 victory over Cagliari in three games later, the Galletti had climbed as high as 12th in Serie A. That was very much as good as it got. The next seven weeks brought defeat after defeat, including a 7-1 hammering at Cremonese.
Still, the goals kept coming for Protti; a run of drilled penalties amongst them, goalkeepers unable to keep them out even if they could reach them.
He managed to keep ahead of Lazio’s Beppe Signori in the Capocannoniere race for much of the season but, as Bari spluttered, Protti’s scoring slowed. It never stopped entirely, however, a notable late season highlight being an overhead kick that sealed a victory over Atalanta; typically, it was an absolute bullet.
He ended the season level on 24 goals with Signori, with Protti’s last strike coming with five minutes left of the season, to earn a 2-2 draw with Juventus. The point wasn’t enough to keep Bari in Serie A, but it was enough to earn Protti a big money move to Lazio where he linked up with Signori.
Billed as the next big thing, Protti disappointed in the capital and found himself shipped out to Napoli next season. Following another disappointing spell there, he moved back to Lazio briefly before moving on, yet again, to Reggiana – back to his journeyman ways.
In 1999, he moved back to Livorno. That spell was so successful that he was granted the freedom of the city – he scored 108 goals for the Labronici in only 192 games, firing the club up towards Serie A.
Protti’s post-Bari career was largely outside Serie A, making his 1995-96 season the high watermark, but he never lost his eye for goal. He retired in 2005, and Livorno retired his number 10 shirt – something Protti was against. Indeed the club used the number again from 2007 onwards, after the striker insisted that those who come after him should be able to dream of wearing it.
Igor Protti rose seemingly from nowhere to be the best there was. For Bari, and for Serie A, that season lives long, and clear, in the memory.
Coincidentally, ten years later, a racehorse named Igor Protti enjoyed a similarly glorious season, winning three races in Milan in 2006. Everything he did before and after paled in comparison. There must be something in the name.
