Did Paul Gascoigne’s Time At Lazio Epitomize His Career?

Paul Gascoigne is an enigma in English football, often considered by those who have seen him play as one of his generation’s best players and those born after his rise to fame, somewhat of an unknown quantity.

It might seem reductive and quite outrageous to suggest that a player who commanded so much media attention in 1990s football is considered to have any elements of his personality or skillset that haven’t been laid bare to the footballing community over the last 35 years.

However, we must remember that Gazza rose to fame in the late 1980s and early 1990s, when football wasn’t as omnipresent as it is today. There was no social media, and Italian football wasn’t shown on English TV, apart from Sunday afternoons on Channel 4 (if you know, you know). Aside from the odd compilation on YouTube, not many Lazio fans have seen Gazza operating in his pomp.

In the early to mid-1990s, Italian football was in its heyday – a league that the best players in the world regularly flocked to, wanting to test themselves against some of the world’s best.

This pivot has shifted recently, and while Serie A is undeniably one of the top footballing leagues in Europe, it has been eclipsed by the exuberant wealth of the EPL, which has subsequently and rather predictably resulted in the world’s top players wanting to play for the big wages.

The sporting audience’s whole landscape has changed along with it, meaning that more football fans tune into the EPL and other markets that underpin it. Football betting has become a colossal market and correlates directly with growing TV audiences.

It helps considerably that sports betting markets now allow people to bet on Serie A from all over Europe and further afield – with many offering in-play markets and other markets you could only find on the EPL until recently. Thunderpick Sportsbook provides these markets, but unlike traditional betting platforms, you can use cryptocurrencies as an alternate payment method.

Thunderpick highlights the changes in football betting and the growing number of people watching and betting on Italian football together. While it’s a much different time than back in the 1990s, some of the numbers and social media impressions Serie A games receive show that they are still undeniably a big draw across Europe.

If we turn back 30 years, Serie A was the main European league—Gazza joined Lazio for £5.5 million, an enormous figure back then. His signing meant that Italian football was broadcast overseas for the first time, helping to create even more hysteria around the Englishman.

Gazza’s recalcitrant attitude polarized him in the eyes of the club’s hierarchy, Sergio Cragnotti, the owner of Lazio. The Englishman, known for his wild, eccentric personality and behaviour, made an off-colour remark to Cragnotti about his daughter, which immediately caused their relationship to get off a sour footing. Gazza fared better on the terraces, though.

A few years ago, an Amazon Prime documentary about his time there hit screens. It highlighted just how beloved the Englishman still is at the Stadio Olimpico. Although the latter stages of his Lazio career were marred by allegations of not training correctly, overeating, and spending his wages handsomely on the finer elements of what the city of Rome had to offer, it hasn’t discouraged Lazio fans from speaking so highly about him.

Many of Gazza’s most brilliant moments came in the famous sky-blue Lazio jersey.

Despite Lazio’s enormous transfer fee for Gascoigne, his first season was considered a success. The club qualified for Europe for the first time in nearly 20 years, and although he often experienced peaks and troughs in his form, it wasn’t until the second season that injuries took hold. Zdeněk Zeman replaced Dino Zoff as manager, and he fell further down the pecking order.

A calamitous leg break in training put him out of action again, and as Gazza ballooned in weight and fell out of favour with the new boss, Rangers came in, willing to pay big money for his services and bring him back to British shores.

Although he was recently snubbed from the Scottish Football Hall Of Fame – his time at Rangers and Lazio both sum up his career as a whole: enormous promise, colossal transfer fees, and an electric start, but ultimately, his lifestyle and attitude eventually caught up to him.

There’s probably a timeline where Gazza won multiple accolades in domestic and international football and cemented his legacy. Who knows if he would’ve sorted out his off-the-field antics under the tutelage of Sir Alex Ferguson?

Lazio fans still have a place for Gascoigne in their hearts, and if football has shown us anything, it’s often that the fans are often the best judge of any player and their time at the club. However, his time at the Olimpico certainly epitomized the flaws and genius of his footballing talent – perhaps more so than anywhere else he played.