Micheli, Mantovani and Zunino make up Bigon’s team

The two 48-year-olds from Rome Maurizio Micheli and Leonardo Mantovani have been appointed as head of scouting and international scout respectively for Bologna under sporting director Riccardo Bigon. The pair have worked in scouting continuously since 2001 when they started under president Gino Corioni at Brescia. They showed the ability and intuition needed to recognise the potential of players while keeping the club’s bank balance under control. The duo were constantly travelling around the world at a time when online scouting tools were very limited. They took a young Marek Hamsik to Lombardy in a genius deal from Slovan Bratislava along with good players for that level such as Salamon, Caracciolo, Martinez, Santacroce and Mannini. A positive decade spent at Brescia lead to the pair moving to president De Laurentiis’s Napoli in the 2009-10 season when Riccardo Bigon arrived as sporting director. Marco Zunino was added to the team as the coordinator of the scouting department. The 49-year-old from Savona came from a past in journalism and the Guerin Sportivo magazine where he was a leading voice on international football. His feature ‘Zunino consiglia’ or ‘Zunino recommends’ was one of his first forays into scouting. At Napoli, the later signings of Callejon, Jorginho, Koulibaly, Behrami, Dzemaili, Mertens and Reina along with two Coppa Italia wins, one Supercoppa Italiana trophy and multiple Champions League qualifications brought their work to the attention of all during the best years for the Partenopei since the days of Maradona and Careca. Micheli, Mantovani and Zunino followed Bigon to Hellas Verona for one season where examples of good scouting were on show with the discoveries of Helander and Viviani despite unfortunate results for the Veneto side.